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What is Accreditation and Why You Should Care

If you want to continue your studies you can anytime enroll to an online college or university.Now if you do a search for example for "online college" you will get a lot of results, but all of these are worthy ? Be careful when applying for accredited online universities. An online college that is not accredited may end up costing you a lot of time and money without providing any rewards.Make sure you know the facts about accreditation before you register for classes with any online school.

What is accreditation ?

In general terms, accreditation is the means by which a school is officially recognized as a provider of a satisfactory education that public institutions can trust.Accreditation ensures a basic level of quality in the education you receive from an institution. It also ensures your degrees will be recognized for the true achievements they are.Accreditation is meant to protect students, schools, and employers. While a student who attends an accredited college, university, or other institution of higher learning can be assured that he or she will receive a quality and trusted education, for his money.Students should remember that a college or university's accreditation does not automatically guarantee a student's academic success.

Why should I care about accreditation ?

Students need to understand the the importance of getting a college degree from an accredited institution and the problems that can appear with a college degree from an instution without accreditation.Now if you didn't skipped the first paragraph you know what is accreditation and why is so important.For those who are not convinced yet here are more reasons.

You want to finish a college and get a degree to get the job you always wanted.Employers want to be sure they are hiring candidates who came from real, certified schools.When a student receives a diploma from a school accredited by the right agency, he can be assured that it will be accepted by all employers.However, if your online school is not accredited by one of the above agencies but by a false accrediting agency, your degree may not be acceptable to most employers, and cause you problems.

Accreditation also determines a school's eligibility for participation in federal and state financial aid programs. Proper accreditation is also important for the acceptance and transfer of college credit, and is a prerequisite for many graduate programs.

How can find if a college or university is accredited ?

Now that you are aware what is accreditation is and why is so important let's find out how you can find an accredited institution.

In United States accreditation is a voluntary, non-guvernmental process of review made by accrediting agencies.In the United States, accreditation organizations are private and not affiliated with the government, though the government uses accreditation organizations to maintain the standards of the nation's colleges and universities. Accreditation organizations exist to review colleges, universities, and other institutions of higher education for standards of quality and improvement efforts.But what about university accreditation worldwide? Who accredits them, and what are the differences? In most countries other than the Unites States, the government is responsible for accreditation.

Sadly, a number of online schools create false accrediting agencies in order to make candidates think that they are trustworthy and established. To avoid this conflict, be sure to check whether or not an online school is accredited .If a college, university, or program you are interested in applying you should be able to tell that very easily because in the United States, there are two organizations that accredit the accreditors.These are :

• The Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) which is a voluntary nongovernmental organization
• The United States department of Education