How to find an Accredited Online College?

The growing popularity of online degrees has resulted in a number of colleges appearing specifically to offer courses over the internet. Unfortunately not all of these schools are of the quality they should be; in fact a lot of them are downright diploma mills. In order to protect yourself and make sure that the degree you get will have value you are going to want to make sure that the school you choose is properly accredited. There are a few things that you are going to have to keep in mind in order to find an accredited online college.

The first thing that you are going to have to look at when you want to find an accredited online college is just what kind of accreditation should the college have. There are actually quite a few different kinds of accreditation but the only one you should really consider is regional accreditation. This is granted by one of the sex regional accrediting bodies, you can look on the internet to get a list of them. This is the gold standard and it is something that any school you are considering should have. There are some people who will argue that certain other types of accreditation are just as good and it may actually be true, there are plenty of good schools that aren't regionally accredited. However with any school that isn't regionally accredited there are always going to be questions raised about your degree. It will be very difficult to transfer your credits or get into graduate school if your degree isn't regionally accredited. Given how many schools there are that meet this standard there is really no reason to consider a school that isn't

There are a few different ways that you can check if the school is regionally accredited; the easiest is on the schools website. Schools will usually prominently display this information, usually in about section. Any school that doesn't list its accreditation clearly is probably doing so for a reason, like they don't have accreditation or it comes from a phony body. Some diploma mills will list accreditation from impressive sounding agencies that are actually just made up. You can also get a list of which schools are regionally accredited from the websites of the accrediting agencies.

Depending on what you are studying there may be additional forms of accreditation that you will need to look for. Engineering degrees for example will need to be accredited by ABET if you want to get an engineering license. There are some situations where the accreditation is required in order to get a license or other certification to work in a certain field. Other times like in business it is just recommended that the school have certain accreditations. If you are considering working in a field that requires you to get a license or some other form of certification you are going to want to make sure that the school you choose is acceptable to whoever provides the certification or license.