How to Ensure Your Degree is the Real Thing

“Earn a college degree in 28 days!”

“Buy your high school diploma now!”

“Get this prestigious unaccredited degree!”

These are among the few advertisements that arrive via e-mail, touting easy ways to earn educational credentials quickly.

If it sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is. Diploma mills abound at both the high school and college level. In particular, since the mid-1990s and the advent of the World Wide Web, they have grown exponentially. While the Internet has been a tremendous boon to education in many ways, it has also spawned in greater numbers these decades-old scams.

How can you be sure that your degree will be accepted by employers and by academia? Ensure that they are properly accredited. However, just as there are diploma mills, there are also accreditation mills. Diploma mills, ever eager for your cash, have set up accreditation mills. Ensure that the accreditor is worthy even before deciding the school or college is accredited.

In the United States, there are six regional accrediting bodies that account for the vast majority of colleges and universities. If your choice is a U.S.-based school, a school accredited by one of these organizations is your safest bet. All legitimate schools will list the regional accreditor on its web site.

The six regional accreditors are:

• Middle State Association of Colleges and Schools
  www.msache.org
• New England Association of Schools and Colleges
  www.neasc.org
• North Central Association of Colleges and Schools
  www.ncacihe.org
• Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges
  www.cocnasc.org
• Southern Association of Colleges and Schools
  www.sacs.org
• Western Association of Schools and Colleges
  www.wascweb.org

The Distance Education and Training Council (www.detc.org) also offers legitimately accredited degrees. DETC, through their own research, readily admits that their degrees are not as acceptable as regionally accredited ones. The problem occurs when you want to take that DETC bachelor's degree and go for a regionally accredited master's degree. Many schools will not accept the degree in transfer.

John Bear, author of Bears' Guide to Earning Degrees by Distance Learning (15th ed., Ten Speed Press, 2003), utilizes the Generally Accepted Accrediting Principles (GAAP) to determine which schools are truly accredited:

1. For U.S. schools, accreditation must be recognized by the Council on Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) which is online at www.chea.org; or
2. Schools in Great Britain and the British Commonwealth must be members of the Association of Commonwealth Universities(www.acu.ac.uk) and must have a listing in the Commonwealth Universities Yearbook; or
3. Schools in Australia must be recognized by the Australian Qualifications Framework, www.aqf.edu.au) or
4. For schools not qualifying in 1-3, they must be in either the World Education Series (http://www.aacrao.org/publications/catalog/wes.htm) (published by PIER) or in the Country Series (http://www.dest.gov.au/noosr/cep/index.htm) (published by Australia's National Office for Overseas Skills Recognition).

U.S. high schools may not necessarily need regional accreditation although most public and some private schools do have it. Often approval from the state Department of Education is enough.

Also, while you would want to check with your college-of-choice first, DETC high schools seem to be acceptable for entrance into undergraduate programs.