Accredited Online Universities

Posts Tagged ‘accreditation agency’

Scams exist in any industry that generates a good profit. Educational industry is one of the highly profitable fields due to the high market demands. And online education is one of the rapid growth areas that attract many scams who try to cut into the market shares with their diploma mills. In order to control the diploma mills, the US department of education has accredited the online universities and colleges that provide “real” online degree programs.

It is important that you get a degree from an accredited online university in order to ensure that your degree is recognized by your future employer when you start your career path after graduation.

Why is Accreditation Important?

Accreditation is a formal recognition on an entire school or college or one of its programs meets certain standards and provides quality education as by the accreditation agencies appointed by the US department of education.

Although graduating from an accredited program does not guarantee you a successful career, it is a key starter when you step your foot into the job market. A degree from accredited online university reflects the quality of the education programs conducted by the university. It provides a sense of public trust and professional quality.

If the online college or university is not accredited, you will have problems if you try to transfer your credits to a traditional college or university later. Many universities do not recognize credit earn from unaccredited online universities. Hence, your credits can not be transferred and you need to start over again.

Nowadays, employers know how to differential between a legitimate and “fake” degree. The first thing employer look at your degree when you applying a job is your degree, whether your degree is from an accredited university and which accreditation agency that accrediting the universities. If you are applying a job with degree from unaccredited university, you need to provide proof to the hiring company that your degree is legitimate. Else it is very high chances that you will not get the job.

Type of Accreditations

The most recognized and accepted type of accreditation in the United States is regional accreditation. There are six geographic regions of the United States regional accreditation agencies:

* The Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools.

* The New England Association of Schools & Colleges.

* The North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

* The Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges.

* The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

* The Western Association of Schools and Colleges.

Generally, college credits or degrees received at a regionally accredited institution are accepted by other regionally accredited colleges or universities. Beside the six regional accreditation agencies, there are 52 recognized national accrediting bodies that normally evaluate and accrediting private online universities.

In Summary

Scams use unethical ways to get the profit by offering diploma mills, a valueless degree that will not help your career after your graduation. Hence, it is important for you to ensure that your degree that you earn through online education is worth the value and will help you to secure a good job in your area of interest.

People who are looking for any online degree program will concerns about accreditation because accreditation is the keyword that differentiates online degree programs that are recognized and offered by reputable online colleges than degrees offer by diploma mills. But this keyword had been abused by diploma mills and most of fake’s online degree programs offer in the market are now claimed accreditation. Hence, you must be a smart consumer when searching for your favorite online degree program and beware of any sign that shows the potential of diploma mill. This article will outline some hints and alerts that you must be aware of when searching for an online degree.

Why Accreditation is Important?

Accreditation provides assurance on the online degree program which you are enrolled or are considering enrolling has met the education guideline of national standards in the profession and the degree you earned or going to earn is recognized and accepted in the job market. Accreditation is not only important to students; it also serves as a guide to employers who are going to hire those graduates, it indicates that these candidates have met the required education standard on the field written in their degree.

How to differentiate “Fakes” & Real Accredited Online Degrees

“Fake” and real online degrees look so alike until sometimes it creates confusion to us. That’s why there are still many people who accidentally signed up the online degree programs offered by diploma mill, and then applying for a job with these fake degrees and get rejected by employers.

The fact is all “fakes” online degrees do claim accreditation nowadays; hence, you can’t just look at the word “accreditation” that attached to any online degree program and think that it is fine to enroll into this program. If it is a “real” online degree, you are lucky, but by chance it may be a degree program that is offered by diploma mills and accredited by a “fakes” accreditation agency; you will waste your time and money when you find out that you have earned a “fake” degree that does not help in your career. Hence, it worth to spend some time to confirm the degree program that you are going to enroll is properly accredited by an accreditation agency recognized by US Department of Education.

Which accreditation agencies are recognized by US Department of Education? There are two categories of accreditation agencies: National Institutional & Specialized Accrediting Agencies and Regional Institutional Accrediting Agencies. All the online universities and colleges accredited by these two groups of accrediting agencies are listed in accreditation database of ed.gov, website of US Education Of Department. So, the accreditation database of ed.gov is a good place to check whether your selected online university and online degree program are property accredited by one of these accreditation agencies.

Another place to check for listed accreditation agency is CHEA.org, it is a non-profit organization of colleges and universities serving as the national advocate for voluntary self-regulation through accreditation. Any accrediting agency or online university that is not list in this accreditation database, it needs to trigger your alert on diploma mills.

Summary

An accredited online degree program does not give assurance on it educational quality if it is not accredited by a proper accreditation agency that is recognized by the US Department of Department. You need to ensure that the online degree program that you are enrolling or considering enrolling is properly accredited in order to ensure the value of your degree you going to earn.