Just because a college or university’s website features a page advertising their accreditation by a legitimate council, doesn’t mean their claim is true. Students researching online schools need to be especially careful when verifying accreditation if there is no brick and mortar campus associated with the school and if they live too far away to visit the school’s headquarters. Relying on just the website will not ensure that all of the time and money you invest in your online education is worth it. Institutions that are unable to prove their accreditation status won’t be considered as trustworthy, quality schools by your potential employers or by other schools with which you want to earn a second degree.

Thankfully, it is easy enough to verify a school’s accreditation status and association with a particular accrediting agency by conducting a simple Web search. The U.S. Department of Education’s site features a database that lists all of the institutional accrediting agencies and specialized or programmatic accrediting agencies that are approved by the Secretary of Education to set standards for evaluation of these institutions and programs. Prospective students can type in the name of the institution they want to research and select a geographic region or U.S. state or territory to get very specific results. The Council for Higher Education Accreditation, or CHEA, also lists contact information and links for the current approved regional accrediting organizations, which are considered to be the most significant accrediting councils in the U.S. The CHEA site also features a database of 7,000 different institutions and 17,000 academic programs that have been approved by CHEA or the U.S. Department of Education to grant degrees. Prospective students can also visit the CHEA directory of recognized accrediting organizations to find faith-related accrediting organizations, career-related councils, programmatic accrediting organizations and more.