You may hear about the importance of college accreditation. You are always being advised to check the college accreditation information before you review its degree program. Colleges with doubtful and incomplete accreditation information should be avoided. But, what is it? And, why is it so important for a student to ensure their college is accredited?
Let's explore a bit about accreditation before we look into the important of it for a college. Accreditation is a voluntary, independent review of education programs by the accrediting organizations grating the accreditation to determine that the education provided is meeting its quality standard. If the education programs meet the set standards of quality in the accrediting guidelines and successfully gone through an evaluation, the school and the education programs are granted with accredited status.
The accreditation is important information that you should know about when searching for a college to pursue your degree. The key reasons include:
1. Quality education
Colleges with proper accreditation ensure a quality education. Students will have confident to pursue their degree program at the college as they know the accredited college meets the national standards of education.
2. Financial aid
For students who are looking for financial aids to support their study, they have to make sure their schools are accredited by a recognized agency because only these schools are eligible to offer state financial aids.
3. Employment
Although there are degrees from good and highly reputed, but not accredited colleges well accepted in the job market, but students are advised to earn their degrees from an accredited college if they are planning to start their career with the degree. Comparatively, employers value the degrees from accredited colleges more highly than the degrees from unaccredited schools. Some students who hold a degree from an unaccredited college find themselves faced difficulties to get hired because many companies don't hire applicants with degrees from unaccredited colleges. Employers will have more confident on candidates with degrees from accredited colleges because they know the education qualification of these candidates are legitimate as they need to meet the graduation requirements of the school in order to earn the degrees.
4. Transfer
When working individuals want to go back to school, or students want to continue their study for higher education at other school, they are typically allowed to transfer credits from previous school, but the credits from an accredited school is accepted. Therefore, students who have any plan to further their study in the future have to take into consideration the accreditation factor when looking for a degree program.
Important Note
For students who plan to pursue a college degree online, you should earn the degree only from an accredited online college. This is because there are far more fake degrees that are offered by diploma mills in online education. Students need to be very careful in reviewing the accreditation information of the online school they are intended in enrolling.
Summary
College accreditation is important information to be reviewed when searching for degree programs offered by various colleges. You have to make sure the college is properly accredited by a recognized accrediting agency before enrolling into its degree program.