Online Classes and Accreditation: What You Need to Know

Even though online classes allow you to work from the privacy and comfort of your home, there’s still an important step to take before signing up with an online college or university: check the accreditation.

Accreditation is the process by which colleges and universities undergo a quality-assurance check to make sure that their offerings meet a certain standard of educational rigor. Contrary to the rest of the world, where accreditation is often accomplished through the local government’s education ministry, schools in the United States are accredited by private institutions that aren’t a part of the state or federal government.

However, the U.S. Department of Education and the non-governmental Council for Higher Education Accreditation do monitor those colleges and universities that have been accredited, and they provide valuable tools that will let you check on your prospective school to determine if it’s passed a quality review by its peers. Many states have placed legal restrictions on the use of credentials from unaccredited universities in order to help prevent fraud and maintain the strength of the higher education system. There are no two ways about it: If you want to get a degree online, the institution needs to be accredited.

Thankfully, there are several helpful ways to determine if your school of choice makes the cut. The Office of Postsecondary Education operates a search engine that indexes all accredited institutions. You can search by accrediting agency or by school name.

The Council for Higher Education Accreditation maintains a similar site that lists more than 7,000 institutions and 18,000 programs that have been recognized by the CHEA, the U.S. Department of Education, or both. Although the U.S. government doesn’t perform the accrediting itself, it does review accrediting agencies and publish a list of those agencies that the Secretary of Education has determined to be reliable authorities on educational quality.

It’s also important to remember that some schools are nationally accredited and others are regionally accredited. The difference in the type of accrediting agency is in the name: regional agencies focus on schools in a specific part of the country, while national agencies accredit schools anywhere in the U.S. and some abroad. Both are valid, but be aware of any potential issues with transer of credits before enrolling in an online program. Nationally accredited schools typically accept course credits from regionally accredited institutions, but regionally accredited schools often don’t accept credit transfers from nationally accredited schools.

One more caveat: Students taking online programs aimed toward law, medicine, nursing, dentistry, or a few other special areas generally need to graduate from a school accredited by their field’s professional organization, such as the American Bar Association or the American Dental Association. Check with your prospective school to see if it meets these requirements.

With that knowledge in hand, finding an accredited college or university will be that much easier.