What is an Accredited Degree?

The word is everywhere—at least in the academic world: “accredited.” Get into grad school with a bachelor’s from an accredited university. Get certified in different jobs with a degree from an accredited degree or program. Some might assume that all schools are accredited if they are accepting students and teaching classes, but that isn’t the case. It is true that most schools are accredited, but some aren’t. Accreditation is completely voluntarily, so some schools can offer a good quality education without being accredited.

An accredited degree is a program that has been approved by an accrediting agency. When a school is being considered for accreditation, every degree program is considered individually. Therefore, a school can have its regional or national accreditation and also its professional accreditation.

Some regional accrediting agencies include:

• Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges
• Accrediting Council for Continuing Education and Training
• Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools
• Middle States Commission on Higher Education
• New England Association of Schools and Colleges, Commission on Institutions of Higher Education
• Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, Commission on Colleges

Any degree coming from a college or university accredited by one of the above agencies, or another nationally recognized agency, will be an accredited degree. However, sometimes a student has to ask, “accredited by whom?” A student at a professional school or pursuing a degree particularly geared toward a specific job wants that degree accredited not only for its academic merits, as the above agencies do, but also for its merits relative to the profession.

Some professionally accredited degrees, approved by their corresponding professional agencies, include:

• National Association of Schools of Art and Design, Commission on Accreditation
• Montessori Accreditation Council for Teacher Education, Commission on Accreditation
• National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education
• American Bar Association, Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar
• American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, Commission on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education
• Association for Biblical Higher Education, Commission on Accreditation
• American Board of Funeral Service Education, Committee on Accreditation
• Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education
• American Psychological Association, Committee on Accreditation

Almost every area of professional service has its own accrediting process. Consequently, some degrees may be double accredited—both as degrees from colleges that meet stringent accreditation requirements and as approved courses of study by the authorities of the profession.

Considering how many accrediting agencies, commissions, councils, and committees there are who function as accreditation granters, some might have the impression that accreditation is an important characteristic of a good school. It certainly is. This is not to say a student can’t learn what he or she needs to know from another non-accredited source. There are good teachers working in community education or other non-accredited programs. But accreditation ensures future employers or future teachers that the student has learned in an organization certified to have met certain standards. It is one clear way employers can make sure that applicants know what they say they know. And in the end, it makes it a lot easier for a graduate to get hired.