Accreditations in general are important for the future of any online university, thereby insinuating that every type of accreditation is important for these schools. Breaking accreditation agencies down among regional and national categories leads to many different arguments that have emerged regarding the “best” way to accredit a school.
There are six different regional accreditors, serving the six geographic areas of the country and serve to accredit various levels of schools, including universities and online universities. Regionally accredited schools are usually those schools that are predominantly academically oriented and non-profit in comparison to nationally accredited schools that are for-profit and offer vocational, career, or technical programs. Many educators believe that regional accreditation is more important to achieve than national accreditation, which only serves to present a problem for those students wishing to transfer halfway through their education from a nationally-accredited school to a regionally-accredited school. However, even more difficult for students to determine is what type of accreditation each school may have. Some regionally-accredited schools have problems in accepting credits from nationally-accredited schools, and vice-versa, resulting in headaches for many of their students.
On the other side of the spectrum are those who believe that national accreditation is the best type, since there are 52 recognized national accreditation organizations which accredit schools nationwide. These requirements that the national body focuses on vary from state to state, complicating students’ lives even further. However, national accreditation focuses mostly on vocational schools which offer both limited degrees and certificates. This is where the main problem between regional and national accreditation comes into play.
The debate that has long been looming over what the “best accreditation” is has culminated within online universities because of the wide scope of degrees which are offered. Many regionally-accredited schools feel that nationally-accredited schools have lower standards for their accreditation solely because they cater to a different level of education in vocational studies. Without meaning disrespect to these degrees and certificates, many of these schools flat out reject transfers from nationally-accredited schools because they believe the students have not been held to as high a level as these regionally-accredited schools will hold them to. There have additionally been many lawsuits relating to the new policies that reject students from vocational schools without letting them know beforehand, simply saying that their previous educational experience does not meet the standards of the rest of the academic world. Aside from crushing students, this has also been found to be illegal so that many schools now no longer discriminate in accepting students from a variety of schools. Online universities have avoided this battle by receiving both types of accreditations in order to satisfy their wide variety of degree programs, making these schools even more enticing to future students. Accreditation is an important part of academics to begin with, and attending a school without accreditation may not be the end of the world, but it has the possibility of harming your future employment.