Distance Learning and Accreditation
You've no doubt heard that it's important to make certain the online education school you pick is accredited. Read on to learn all you need to know regarding distance education and accredited learning.
What does accreditation mean?
Accreditation can add up to the difference between obtaining a degree that is respectable or a certificate that is no-good. Accreditation is actually an official inspection of an education school to ensure that it provides all of the conventionalities expressed by the agencies that assign accreditation. At this moment there are 6 accrediting agencies that are certified by the National Board of Education. These 6 agencies comprise:
New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC)
North Central Association of Schools and Colleges (NCASC)
Middle States Association of Schools and Colleges (MSASC)
Southern Association of Schools and Colleges (SACS)
Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WACS)
Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges (NWCCU)
Why is accreditation paramount?
Accreditation is a manner to ensure that all students be trained the same kinds of material regardless of the individual university they attend. Accreditation is also a manner of promising probable jobs that the individual has attained a valuable education and has proficient qualifications that are relevant in today's marketplace.
Other sorts of accreditation
Besides institutional accreditation, there is another type of accreditation called 'specialized accreditation'. Specialized accreditation usually is awarded to a singular department or educational course within a larger academy or college. This can be, for example, a College of Medicine which is a division of a larger school, or simply a unique special program of study within the school like a teaching certification course that's taught by an academy.
Normally, an academy that holds a specialized accreditation also holds an institutional accreditation by one of the preceding six accreditation bureaus.
If you are considering following a career in one of the areas that usually have specialized accreditation programs offered, which consist of plenty of health and medicine fields, commercial art and design, theology, engineering, culinary arts, accounting and law, make sure to see if the distance learning course you are considering enters into this sort of accreditation. That way you will have a greater prospect of landing a high-paying livelihood when you finish school.
How to check a distance learning plan's accreditation
It may amaze one to learn there is an accreditation organization whose mission it is to accreditate all other accreditation organizations. That is the academic industry's process of making certain that no phoney accreditation societies spring up to stake diploma mills and poor colleges.
This organization is named the Council on Higher Education Accreditation and they operate a web address at http://www.chea.org. Only authorized accreditors and accredited colleges are allowed to be listed on this web address.
Supposing the institution in which you are considering signing on with pronounces they are accredited and either that college or the group that accreditates it is not listed on the http://www.chea.org web address, one should probably probe more closely as something is definitely amiss.
© 2007 Carl Street, PupBrothers.com
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