College Accreditation and What does it mean to You

Guest Post by Dr. Ward Deutschman from Dowling College.

Read Part 1  – What is difference between college and university.

For the rest of this post I will use the word “college” to mean either college or universities, since they are so similar.

College Accreditation

Another question I hear is, “What is accreditation and what does it mean to me?”

Accreditation means that the college has been looked at closely by people from other colleges. A team from an Accrediting Association comes to the school and looks closely at the library, laboratories, administration, teaching, and the records of the school They ask, “what are your major goals as a college or university?” and then look closely to see if the school is accomplishing those goals.

Some accrediting associations then entire college, and some “specialized” organizations look only at specific programs.

For example some look at engineering programs, and some at business, education, and other programs. But the question for you is, “what does all this mean to me as a student?”

The answer is that it means that there is serious quality control over the schools and their programs. This is so important that the U. S. government requires that only students going to accredited colleges can get government help with their finances.

Unfortunately this does not help international students, but it tells you about how important accreditation is seen by the government. But even more important to you — if you go to an accredited college in the U. S., take some courses, and then decide that you would rather go to another college, most of the credits which you earned by successfully taking those expensive college courses, can be transferred to the new school right with you.

BUT if you go to an UNACCREDITED school, you can usually forget about transferring courses or credits. They are useless to you if you decide to move on to an accredited school. So it is worth asking the question, and even better, going to following sites

• US Government accreditation and checking out the college for yourself!

• How to Find College Accreditation (another way)

If you heard about the problems with Tri-Valley University, five minutes checking their accreditation would have saved a large number a people a lot of time, money, and pain.

Dowling College — medium sized college near New York City. Website is www.Dowling.edu, and for International students check out www.dowling.edu/International. Our classes are small — often less than 20 students, and taught by Professors who care about students. We have many undergraduate programs, and strong Graduate MBA and Masters in Education programs as well as a new undergraduate program in Mathematics (with applications for Bioengineering, Aerospace, and Business), and a new Masters program in Environmental Microbiology. And if you are interested in our college, send a note to [email protected] and let us send you some information.

Questions – If you have any questions about admission, please free to post below. Dr.Deutschman will answer them.