Regional Accreditation

Understanding Accreditation is Simple Once You Know These Three Things

Regional accreditation is the way the U.S. Department of Education split the country into six sections, in order to administer it's federal educational programs. Understand the following three things and you'll know pretty much everything you'll ever need to know about regional accreditation.

There are six regional accredting agencies and one distance education agency.

1. There are six regional accrediting bodies authorized by the U.S. Dept. of Education. You live in one them. Online colleges have a home base in one of them. BUT there is a seventh accrediting body that works specifically with distance learning schools called the DETC.

2. In order to be eligible to participate in the Title IV federal financial aid program - a school has to be accredited by a regional accreditation body OR the distance education accrediting agency (DETC).

Once a school is accredited, they can apply to the U.S. Dept. of Education for participation in Title IV programs. Yes, that means the accredited school can then give you a Pell grant, a Stafford loan and sundry other grants and loans for students.

No accreditation means NO FEDERAL FINANCIAL AID for you.

3. Most schools that are regionally accredited will accept college credits from any other regionally accredited school (within the parameters of their own credit adoption policy).

Schools are not so thrilled to accept credits from a school that is only accredited by the DETC. There are historical reasons for this. Hopefully, this elitist bias will get better over time. Until it does, you need to plan very carefully when enrolling in a DETC only, accredited school.

Credits only transfer between regionally accredited schools and only sometimes from DETC schools.

It's super simple to check if your school is accredited by one of these six regional accrediting agencies. It's also easy to check the DETC website for the lowdown on their member schools.

Remember - not all accredited schools offer federal financial aid. They have to apply for it first. Some schools, for religious reasons, or to curb administration costs choose not to apply for or offer federal financial aid.

So, after checking for regional accreditation you have one more chore to do.

Check to see if your school participates in the Title IV federal financial aid program.

Then you are home free.