In this thead I started explaining my long-term confusion about how colleges and Universities are accredited in the USA, and which ones are considered legitimate by hiring corporations and other institutions of learning.
So I thought I’d just go out to several well-known colleges and look up their accreditation, but it either wasn’t easy to find on their websites, or was so well and fully obfuscated that I walked away trying to remember my own name.
So I’d like to hear most from either those who are employed in institutions of higher learning, or in the personnel/recruiting offices of major corporations. Which types of accreditiaiton do you accept? What should we be looking for?
I’m not really qualified according to the OP, but I’ve done some research into this. In the US, the federal Department of Education does not directly accredit (i.e. approve) of schools individually. What they do do is approve associations that do accredit schools.
There are several types of accreditation that a school in the US can have:
Regional Accreditation - this is the gold standard and is possessed by almost every mainstream “university”, such as Harvard, UCLA, Ohio State, or Virginia Tech. Both public schools, private secular nonprofit schools, religious schools, and for-profit schools can get this. Regional accrediting agencies focus on a specific region, for example the South.
National Accreditation - this was traditionally the accreditation possessed by “career tech” schools. ITT Tech, the incessant TV advertiser, is nationally accredited. Another famous school that is nationally accredited is Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist Christian school. National accrediting agencies typically accredit schools anywhere in the country. The standards for national accreditation are ostensibly looser than for regional accreditation, and many regionally accredited schools and employers thumb their nose at national accreditation and either won’t accept degrees or credits so accredited or will only accept them grudgingly.
Nonaccreditation/Unrecognized Accreditation - Being accredited by an agency that is not recognized by the US government is essentially equivalent to having no accreditation at all, except maybe with agencies/schools/employers that are affiliated with the unrecognized accreditor themself or have a special interest in nonstandard accreditation, such as fundamentalist churches. Schools in this category range from schools that teach real courses and have real standards, such as some fundamentalist Bible Colleges, to outright scams and diploma mills that will give you a PhD for $50 and a self addressed stamped envelope.
Some for-profit schools (schools that are run by for-profit businesses) are gaining regional accreditation. For example, DeVry, which used to be (and still is, to some extent) considered a bottom of the barrel school that anyone can get into and that one only goes to if one can’t get in to a better school, is now regionally accredited.
One consequence of the accreditation hierarchy is that there is generally only recognition going down the hierarchy. For example, nationally accredited schools will often recognize work done at a regionally accredited school as meeting their standards, but regionally accredited schools thumb their noses at nationally accredited credits and degrees, so good luck getting into a graduate program at Virginia Tech with your bachelor’s degree from ITT Tech or Bob Jones.
There is also program accreditation, which I don’t know a whole lot about. This is a type of accreditation that applies specifically to a degree program, such as an MBA in International Finance or a BS in Electrical Engineering.