Is Your School Accredited?

“Is your school accredited?”

College and vocational school admissions representatives get this question several times a day, provided they don’t mention it first. The question comes up at smaller schools; these are not the types of questions Ivy League or large state universities contend with. For them, much is assumed about the quality and rigor of their programs. For most students, choosing to attend those schools depend on the most common factors: money, major/program/certification, convenience, and preference.

And, of course, application acceptance.

But what about the smaller colleges and universities? What about trade and vocational schools? What guarantee does a prospective student have that the associate degree nursing program or IT certification they’re considering is a quality program? Especially if it’s from a private institution?

And what if the program is online, either partially or completely?

Enter accreditation. While the admissions representative’s first and simplest response is “yes,” that is the very small tip of a very large iceberg.

(By the way, if you’re considering or talking to a school where the answer is “no” or “not yet,” I would strongly suggest you reconsider.)

Accreditation is a massive undertaking for a school, so much so that those large universities have entire departments dedicated to its upkeep and maintenance. Accreditation is not just a one-time stamp of approval — it’s a living and breathing animal (which can be a beast, depending which side of the table you’re on) that needs constant attention and diligence.

Think of a school’s accreditation like a fish tank, where there are roughly a dozen fish who all eat different types of food and need to all be fed at different times. And if one fish dies, the whole fish tank gets drained and you have to go back to the pet store.

What the admissions representative will casually say “yes” to with confident reassurance actually is the groundwork behind the entire school’s operations. It presides over each and every policy and procedure, from the sign on the door to the ad stapled to a pizza box.

While it’s a pretty involved undertaking for any school or program (oh yeah, there are program-specific accreditations, as well), here’s the broad strokes of what accreditation does:

If I had to sum up what accreditation means for students in one word, that word would be protection. It provides for transparent procedures that meet or exceed federal and state statutes and provide guidance and structure in areas that statutes don’t cover. For example, it is against the law (at least in Illinois) for college admissions representatives to be paid a commission or bonus based on the number of students they enroll. Laws do not, however, provide an outline for how a school is going to live up to its published transfer of credit policy, complete with a paper trail for each student who transfers credit to that school. See the difference?

But an accrediting body will provide that outline and will want it enforced with examples. The transfer of credit policy will be revised until it meets their standards of fairness, and then enforced with regular checks (every one to five years depending on how compliant the school is) in order to ensure that that fair policy is not being ignored and you, the student, is getting what was promised by the school on paper.

Accreditation protects the student from the admissions process all the way through graduation and job placement. It is a system of checks, balances, and built-in paper trails to ensure a school is living up to every standard of excellence they claim to uphold. What happens when they fall short? We’ll get to that in a bit.

So what’s the trade-off? Do the schools, who go through this continual effort, receive anything in return? Why yes, yes they do.

Accreditation is the key to receiving financial aid dollars from the government. National accreditation (the most basic form) will qualify a school to receive federal financial aid; regional accreditation (which is another layer on top of a national accreditation) allows schools to receive aid funded by state programs, as well.

Institutions who don't meet initial accreditation standards keep reapplying until their standards are up to spec. Schools that have met their initial accreditation but are having difficulty keeping their accreditation is another story entirely. These schools are already collecting thousands upon thousands of financial aid dollars and will not want to give up that income stream (actually, everything else is a stream. Federal financial aid is a river of cash).

These schools that are having re-accreditation issues have multiple chances to refine policy and procedures and then resubmit the areas of policy/procedure under scrutiny to the accrediting body (usually a number of times) in an effort to correct the situation. Most are able to comply fairly easily as accreditation officers will give very plain instructions as to what's needed; those who don't will see their doors closed sooner rather than later as a result of accreditation revocation (along with the financial aid dollars that came with it.)

My advice to you is not to just ask, "Are you accredited?" Instead, ask who their accrediting body is. When you go home that night you can look them up online on the accrediting body's site and learn a great deal more about the school you just left. See if it matches up with the look and feel from your admissions appointment. Ultimately, make a better decision!