AECSA is a non-profit organisation set up to investigate and categorise the educational standards of universities and professional organisations
around the world.
Over the years it has investigated over 1,000 universities and professional bodies, and list all who meet its high certification standards as
"approved" organisations. AECSA also lists universities and professional bodies that are of a dubious nature
under headings such as "degree mills" and "non-traditional"
institutions on this website.
AECSA also undertakes the ranking of universities and professional bodies
by specialisation, either by itself or via the rankings published by leading educational establishments, newspapers and professional journals...
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1. Introduction
2. Regional Accrediting Organisations
3. Accrediting Organisations in Specific Discipline Areas
4. Law
5. Accreditation Process
1. Introduction
Many students in the USA, let alone Australia and the rest of the world are baffled at the complexity of accreditation in the USA.
The state and federal governments in the USA spend billions of dollars every year to support universities in the USA. Surprisingly, there are however, no government standards for the quality of education at universities in the USA. Instead, minimum standards for education in universities are set by private, nonprofit corporations, called accrediting organisations.
There are essentially 4 level of ‘legal recognition' of a university in the USA. To simplify matters, colleges, schools and/or universities are referred to as just universities.
Authorized University: As the word ‘university' has had for many years in some states in the USA (especially California) only minimal protection under the state laws, thus individuals could start a university by registering a business name, with the word university in it (there were very minimal capital requirements of having real property assets of only US$ 50,000 – a quarter of the value of their house). California has now eliminated this "authorized" category, but there are so-called universities still advertising themselves as being “Authorized”. Many of these have given up any attempt of State or other regulation, and are classified as “Degree Mills” by the authorities.
Religious University: Another large gray area is the one dealing with religious schools. Because constitutional safeguards in the United States guarantee separation of church and state, most states have been reluctant to pass any laws restricting the activities of churches -- including their right to grant degrees to all who make an appropriately large donation. In many states, religious schools are not regulated but are restricted to granting religious degrees. But in some, like Louisiana and Hawaii, if you established your own one-person church yesterday, you could start your university today and award a Ph.D. in nuclear physics tomorrow.
Approved University: This is a stricter requirement in that there must be elements of instruction provided by an establishment in order to obtain State-approval. However, approval is given for a specific degree only, and not all the degrees in the university. Therefore, care must be taken can the course been undertaken has been specifically approved, even though the university advertises itself as “Approved”.
Accredited University: To call itself “Accredited” a university must have all its degrees, in all subject areas, in the entire university accredited by one of the six regional accrediting organisations for universities in the USA, each with a different territory. Students should be careful if a university claims to be “accredited”, as the question must be asked, “by whom”? Many Degree Mills start their own “Accrediting Agencies” under very officious titles. Therefore, make sure the accrediting agency itself is listed in The Council for Higher Education Accreditation ( CHEA ) website. CHEA is a private organisation that coordinates the regional accrediting organisations, as well as the accrediting organisations in specific academic subjects.
2. Regional Accrediting Organisations
There are six regional accrediting organisations for universities in the USA, each with a different territory. These regional accrediting organisations accredit all degrees, in all subject areas, in an entire university. (See below for organisations that accredit degrees in a single academic subject.) The alphabetical list of states in parentheses comprises the region for each organisation.
- Middle States (Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania)
- New England (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont)
- North Central (Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming)
- Northwest (Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington state)
- Southern (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia)
- Western (California and Hawaii)
The Council for Higher Education Accreditation ( CHEA ) is a private organisation that coordinates the regional accrediting organisations, as well as the accrediting organisations in specific academic subjects.
The federal government in the USA plays a negligible roll in accreditation, mostly in The Office of Postsecondary Education of the U.S. Department of Education.
3. Accrediting Organisations in Specific Disciplines
There are also accrediting organisations for academic degrees in some specific descipline areas (e.g. business). This can also be confusing as there are Universities that do not have regional accreditation overall, but still have accreditation for a particular discipline.
The following are examples of descipline area accrediting bodies:
• Chemistry
The American Chemical Society, Committee on Professional Training ( ACS )
• Computer Science
- The Accreditation Board for Engineering & Technology, Computing Accreditation Commission ( ABET-CAC ).
- The Computing Sciences Accreditation Board ( CSAB ) participates in ABET. The CSAB includes representatives of the Association for Computing Machinery, the Computer Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, and the Association for Information Systems.
• Engineering & Technology
The Accreditation Board for Engineering & Technology ( ABET ) has representatives from all of the major engineering professional societies in the USA, including:
- The Association of Mechanical Engineers (ASME),
- The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), and
- The National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE), amongst many others.
• Law
- The American Bar Association ( ABA ) section on legal education and
- The Association of American Law Schools ( AALS ) both evaluate law schools.
• Medicine
The Liaison Committee on Medical Education ( LCME ) is a joint project of
- The Association of American Medical Colleges ( AAMC ) and
- The American Medical Association, Council on Medical Education ( AMA-CME )
• Business
The American Association of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accredits business schools in USA, and now performs this service worldwide.
• Meteorology / Atmospheric Science
The American Meteorological Society (AMS) has issued a policy statement that describes the minimum curriculum and faculty for a bachelor's degree in meteorology. The AMS also certifies individual people as competent in meteorology.
Note that some of these standards are set by a nonprofit professional society that is concerned with the subject matter (e.g., ACS, ABA, IEEE). Other standards are set by associations of medical schools or law schools.
There are many other examples of accreditation for a specific department. Further, the examples in law and medicine are important because state governments require that a person who is licensed to practice law or medicine must have graduated from an accredited school, amongst other requirements.
The U.S. Department of Education has a list of nationally recognised accrediting agencies by subject area, which includes many other accrediting organisations. In case that link does not work, try the U.S. Department of Education homepage for accreditation.
4. Law
The accrediting organisations are all nonprofit corporations. Courts generally defer to any decision made by an accrediting organisation, provided that:
- The organisation followed its own rules.
- The act was in good faith.
- There exists a formal, internal procedure for protests of an impending act that adversely affects a party.
This legal principle was established in England in the case Dawkins v. Antrobus, 17 Ch. D. 615 (1881). There are several scholarly articles that explain the law in more detail:
- Zechariah Chafee, "The Internal Affairs of Associations Not for Profit", 43 Harvard Law Review 993 (1930).
- William A. Kaplin and J. Philip Hunter, Comment, "The Legal Status of the Educational Accrediting Agency: Problems in Judicial Supervision and Governmental Regulation," 52 Cornell Law Quarterly 104 (1966).
4. Accreditation Process
The accreditation process undertaken differs depending on the organisation undertaking the accreditation. However, most have the following aspects:
Evaluations of a department involve preparing a substantial document about each class (objectives, content, requirements, and example examinations)
- C.V. of each professor and research record. [Of course, what really matters is the knowledge of students who pass each class, but accrediting organisations seem to accept the polite assumptions that a professor would never:
- Teach only part of the written course syllabus, to make the class easier for the students.
- Give generous partial credit when grading examinations, so that students who are incompetent make a score higher than 70% and pass the class.
- Tell the students what will be on the examination, so the students can prepare to take the examination, a practice known as "teaching the test". Of course, nearly all of the students make high scores on such an examination, but the scores are meaningless as a measure of the students' competence.
- Avoid using online tools to detect plagiarisation , despite evidence that at least 1/4 of term papers in universities in the USA contain plagiarized material.
- Privately reprimand students who plagiarise their term papers, instead of giving them a failing grade in the class and reporting them for investigation and disciplinary action.]
- Every accredited university must have an adequate library, to support scholarly research by both students and faculty. Most major universities have a total of more than 5 × 10 5 volumes of scholarly books and periodicals in the several libraries on their campus.