National vs. Regional Accreditation – Why it Matters
June 14, 2019 10:01am
Nationally or regionally accredited. You see those words often in college advertisements and materials. What is accreditation? You may not have given much thought, but whether colleges are accredited and how they are accredited should be one of the biggest factors you take into consideration when you are choosing a school and degree program.
What is accreditation?
Accreditation is a voluntary process that validates that a university, college, or specific program meets quality standards. The accreditation processes and agencies that implement them are overseen by the U.S. Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA). A college might be accredited one of two ways- nationally or regionally. Both are different and can have effects on you while you’re in college and beyond graduation. It’s important to know the difference.
National Accreditation vs. Regional Accreditation
The most widely-recognized and renowned accreditation is a regional accreditation. In fact, regional accreditation accounts for 85% of accredited schools in the United States. There are six different regional accrediting agencies that each cover a certain region of the country. The school and the accrediting agency work together to form criteria which must be met in order to receive accreditation. Once the school conducts an evaluation of its programs, the agency sends a team of evaluators to see if the standards have been met. If so, the school is granted accreditation and is continually monitored by the agency. Re-evaluations are done periodically thereafter to validate that standards are being maintained. Most state-owned and nonprofit colleges are regionally accredited. Because the accreditation process is costly, most regionally accredited schools will have higher tuition rates than those with national accreditation, but the higher price can be worth it in the long run.
National accreditation bodies are either career or faith related and can award accreditation based on a particular field of study. The majority of nationally-accredited schools are for-profit career or vocational colleges. National accrediting agencies establish their criteria through comparing similar colleges with the same accreditation throughout the country. These schools typically have more lenient admission standards and cost less than regionally-accredited colleges.
Why should regionally or national accreditation matter to me?
According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center Signature Report in 2018, about one in four students transfer credits to a school in a different state then they originally started their college education. With that in mind, credit transfer is a very important factor and how your college of choice is accredited can have a direct effect on you. Credits earned at a nationally-accredited institution (with few exceptions) can only be transferred to other nationally-accredited schools. So if you earn a certificate or undergrad degree credits at a for-profit, nationally-accredited school, you more than likely will not be able to transfer those credits to a regionally-accredited school. That will leave you back at square one if you want to earn an undergraduate or graduate degree later down the road. This is not the case the other way around, however. Nationally-accredited colleges do accept credits earned at regionally-accredited schools. Also, while both accreditations are acceptable to employers, you might not be eligible for tuition reimbursement for a degree earned at a nationally-accredited institution.
The bottom line when it comes to accreditation is to make sure you do your research. Look at the type of accreditation your school has and then look at the accrediting agency. If you aren’t sure if your school is accredited, you can view an online database of accredited schools on the U.S. Department of Education website. You want to be certain that your college has some type of accreditation. Those without it are not eligible to offer financial aid, which many student rely on to afford the cost of tuition. And employers will want to see that you earned your degree at an accredited school. Non-accredited schools may be viewed as having shoddy degree programs by employers and that can damper your ability to turn your degree into a career.
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