Accredited Online Colleges

Accreditation for Online Colleges

Getting a college degree has never been easier. Thousands of degrees, professional certification courses, and continuing education credits are available online. Studying at home, at one's own pace, can be the most efficient and cost-effective way to get the education you need to advance your career. Provided the online college with which you study is accredited, of course.

Let's start with a definition. Accreditation is a third party's certification that a college program meets certain standards of academic rigor; in other words, that students actually do meaningful work and learn specific skills or knowledge. Accreditation is important for several reasons.

First, many scholarship and government financial aid programs fund only accredited college programs. Even banks may require accreditation as evidence that student loan money will be spent on education that will enable the borrower to pay back the loan. (See my related article Don't Fall For Online Financial Aid Scams.)

Second, college credits earned through accredited institutions are usually transferable to other colleges. You can take basic courses inexpensively online from an accredited institution instead of paying through the nose for them at an Ivy League school. But if the credits don't come from an accredited institution, Harvard may say they're worthless towards your MBA degree.

Third, employers look for accreditation as evidence that you actually learned something useful - or, at least, that you were taught something useful. You definitely want to avoid online "diploma mills" that simply take tuition money, mail a paper diploma, and tell employers, "Yes, we gave him a BS degree." BS, indeed.

Accrediting Organizations

So all you need to do is look for the word, "accredited" in an online college's website, right? Well, no; it's not that easy, unfortunately. If the online college you're considering is associated with an established real-world college or university, that's a plus, but it's still no guarantee that the specific program or classes you want are accredited. Colleges, in particular, are persnickety about who does the accreditation of course. Funders and employers are not so picky, generally speaking.

There are a number of nationwide accrediting organizations; many regional ones; and some clique-ish ones established by small circles of institutions who snobbishly accept only each other's credits. So you must be careful, in planning your educational path, to choose online colleges whose accredited credits will definitely be accepted by the employer or colleges you plan to attend in the future.

So how can you find out if the accrediting organization is legitimate? A site called World Wide Learn provides a helpful directory of accrediting organizations and other useful information about college accreditation.

Is My Online College Accredited?

Ask an online college for the name of the organization that accredits it. Ask if the entire online college is accredited or only specific courses. Check out the online college's accrediting organization to make sure it exists, and see that it is widely accepted and legitimate.

It may be easiest to start with the college or university at which you plan to end. Ask the admissions office for the name of accreditation organization(s) that certify their school. Follow up by visiting the US Department of Education's database of accredited colleges.

Be aware that colleges and specific courses can occasionally lose their accreditation. Other institutions may decide their standards have slipped and stop accepting their credits. So even after enrolling in an online college that was properly accredited at the time you enrolled, it pays to keep tabs on news concerning the institution and its accreditation.

If your goal is transferring your credits to another college, or earning a degree to advance your career, then accreditation is important. But if you just want to learn for fun or curiousity's sake, there many excellent online college courses you can take. Many prestigious universities, such as MIT, Stanford, Yale and Notre Dame, offer free online courses, and in some cases, you can earn actual college credits. See my articles Free Online College Courses and Free Online College Courses - Part Deux to get started.

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