With educational trends leaning more towards going to college online, finding accredited college courses is a very important for either the new or continuing college student. Accreditation refers to a college or university that has been accredited, or basically has set forth high standards that have been met by the organizations who off accreditation. Accreditation can be on a regional, national, programmatic or national faith-based accreditors.
The importance of attending an online college that is accredited is highly important, specifically if a particular job you are after (for example, a teaching position) requires accreditation from the institutes that teach you, in order to be able to justifiably certify you. With may hundreds of organizations on the Internet that are not accredited schools, this weeds out those who are not conforming to higher educational standards.
It’s fairly obvious why accreditation is important. If you are considering teaching children, then you must be found to have been educated at least to the highest possible standards possible, and with no more than a B average for competencies in various subject matter. Naturally, some people might become upset at suggesting that B’s or higher should be considered the “norm”, along with having taken classes by accredited institutions, however, what if that B is not based on grades, and only on competency?
For example, there are colleges who strictly operate on this principle: No grades, only competency that meets a standard of at least a “B” equivalency. Not bad, if you can take exams and other assessments till you can reach that through applying various means to your course of study in order to achieve this. Even people who normally have obtained C’s and D’s in high school, can be found to be highly competent in competency-only online colleges.
While it is certainly easy enough to find online colleges, it isn’t necessarily easy to find the RIGHT online colleges. For example, some online colleges have only one or two full accreditations, while others will have more. The more a school has in accreditations, the more likely your degree will be acceptable where you will be working, whether as a teacher or other business professional.
Some college courses that must be accredited include not only the educational arena, but also IS (Information Science), Library and other Science degrees require them, especially when one is applying for work within these particular disciplines. It is very important, prior to attending an online college, to know exactly what they have to offer at the time you apply with regard to accreditation as well as what they are working on. Both of these answers should be easily answered by the staff at these schools, since the bottom line is that they really do want students who are competent and can therefore handle competency-based work. It should be noted that not all online colleges that are accredited go by a competency-based curriculum; many are still quite traditional, utilizing a grading system. Any way you look at it, achieving a college degree is a dream that can be accomplished. Just be on the lookout for accreditation with your college of choice.