I would like to know your thoughts on what exactly accreditation for colleges and universities means?

Answer 1

What it actually means is that someone other than the college itself has looked into the activities of the college and feels that they are accomplishing what they claim to accomplish. It means that they are meeting an external measure of acceptable performance, rather than just bragging that they are great with nothing to prove it.

From the student perspective, one thing you need to realize is that there are often more than one level of accreditation that you need to look at. There is the accreditation of the entire institution, and then there is the accreditation of the specific discipline, which is even more important for some disciplines. Let me explain what you should be looking for in each, and why. Many rather disreputable institutions just claim that they are "accredited", but since almost anyone could set up their own accrediting organization and give out certifications for a fee, these may be meaningless.

At the level of the entire institution, accreditors look at everything from the administration of the institution, to the use of funds (consistent with the stated goals of the institution), to the learning outcomes of the college or university. They pay a lot of attention to the mission of the institution and ensure that the organization is really carrying it out at all levels, and that it is not just an empty slogan. The respected organizations for doing this are regional accreditors, such as WASC or North Central. If a school says that they are accredited by someone as a whole, you can go onto the website of that organization and see who their members are, and if you don't recognize any of them, run!

At the level of the particular discipline, the school also needs to be accredited separately, in many cases. There are some particularly strong accreditors - NCATE for Education, AACSB for Business, ABET for Engineering, etc., which are a sign of quality in those fields, and most of the disciplinary accreditors are national or international in scope. With a particular expertise in one area, these accrediting organizations are concerned with the link between the expectations of society and the quality of the education, so that NCATE accreditation would tell you that the institution is producing teachers which our culture considers acceptably trained, ABET tells you that these engineers are trained to know what engineers should know, etc. I also know that in disciplines like Dance, Art, etc., these accreditors have set standards for evaluating the creative work of faculty so that when they go up for tenure, you aren't faced with a comparison of looking at whether six pieces of pottery are the equivalent of six articles in peer-reviewed journals.

What do you get from going to an accredited institution? Well, aside from some degree of quality assurance that you wouldn't get elsewhere, and some reassurance that your money is not being wasted, you get a degree which is more generally recognized. If you go to a program which has a disciplinary accreditation, it will allow you to transfer courses from that school to another. For example, I teach in a business school, and students who took undergraduate business courses at another AACSB accredited school can waive the basic MBA courses, but those who took them at a non-AACSB school have to take them again. Although it is far less common than it used to be for employers to pay tuition for their employees, we find that of those who do, many require that they attend not only accredited schools but that they go to those accredited by the premium disciplinary accreditors.

I hope that answers your question.

Answer 2

Raflorsh gave an absolutely outstanding answer. ☺

remember, accreditation means only that the minimum standards of the accreditor have been met. Most don't rank their institutions so you can't use it to mean that NASM school A is better or worse than NASM school B. What you know is that NASM schools A, B, and C have at least met the same essential requirements. If you compare them to a non-NASM school, you don't know that the NASM is better but you also don't know whether the non-NASM school has met the minimum standard.

Discipline accreditation is very important in fields such as engineering, law, medicine, nursing, business, etc.... It can even be more important than regional accreditation; if your law school isn't ABA accredited, you can't take the bar for example.

Answer 3

Accreditation is a type of quality assurance process under which a facility's or institution's services and operations are examined by a third-party accrediting agency to determine if applicable standards are met. Should the facility meet the accrediting agency's standards, the facility receives accredited status from the accrediting agency.

http://www.chea.org/default.asp?link=4

Answer 4

That the school, the professors, the classes, the policies, and the programs have all been evaluated by a committee of other institutions.

Students can get more financial aide for attending accredited schools, and the eventual degree carries more prestige.

Answer 5

It means a national board has approved the college as being legit.

It's good to enforce quality of education. If they weren't accredited, noone knows if you just got a degree because you payed someone to print one for you.

Answer 6

One big way I've noticed that it affect the students, is in transferring credits from one college to another. Some colleges wont accept credits from other colleges if they arent accredited in the same way they are.