Online colleges couldn’t be any more accommodating and user-friendly than they are today. Every day, more and more people of all ages are going back to school online because it is convenient, affordable and valuable. Over the last few years, online education has proven to be a reliable and widely-recognized alternative to traditional, campus-based education. Hundreds of colleges, big and small, have taken the leap toward online education and have helped people find their passions and advance their careers while they maintain work, family and social obligations.
With so many online colleges to choose from, it is imperative that you research each school thoroughly, starting with its accreditation status. Now, you might be asking yourself what is accreditation and why should I care? But, the truth is, accreditation means everything to a school’s current and future academic reputation and often its eligibility for federal assistance. Not all online colleges are accredited and some are working towards accreditation, but it’s in your best interest to choose one that is. An accredited university is an institution that has met educational standards as laid out by governmental and non-governmental agencies, which are private educational organizations at regional or national levels. These agencies use strict criteria to peer evaluate and examine each school’s academic efforts before granting accredited status. The Council for Higher Education Accreditation defines accreditation as quality assurance and quality improvement in its document, called Accreditation and Recognition in the United States. Accreditation ensures that an institution’s graduates are equipped with the requisites for admission to other institutions of higher learning and recognized for employment. The main purpose of accreditation is to guarantee that institutions of higher education will continue to meet levels of quality education and uphold these standards for years to come. Because accreditation is so important online colleges and potential students, it is imperative that the information you are seeking on each school comes from an authoritative source. The U.S. Department of Education has created an institution database with more than 6,900 accredited schools to research and choose from.
The more knowledgeable you are on accreditation and each agency’s standards, the better you will be able to pinpoint which schools are not accredited and which ones are phony. These organizations,better known as diploma mills, give academic credit for a student’s life experiences and award a degree on this basis. Diploma mills have become a legitimate threat to online students because they may fall victim to these money scams and illegitimate diplomas. Thankfully, there are ways to identify diploma mills from the rest, but you should always do research on each school and be alert for online degree plans that seem too good to be true. The Federal Trade Commission aims to protect students from diploma mills and various educational scams with informative tips and indicators to help distinguish real schools from the fake ones.
