Acts20.com

I remember checking for accredited schools versus those that were accredited by some Bible group that was not recognized by other schools many years ago. When offering advice to a young person I encourage him or her to attend an accredited school. Since my personal search was many years ago what are the present legitimate accrediting agencies for an undergraduate, master or doctorate degree? Is there a list you can copy/paste or a source we can look up online?

Great question. The Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation maintain lists of legitimate accrediting agencies.ope.ed.gov/accreditation/agencies.aspxwww.chea.org/4DCGI/cms/review.html?Action=CMS Document&DocID=38&MenuKey=mainA good school will list their accrediting agencies, usually in the About or Academics section of their website. You can then verify those agencies against this list to confirm they are legitimate.Some agencies are regional accrediting agencies and some are national accrediting agencies. They're both legitimate, but in different scopes. Whether that is relevant or not will depend on the career expectations associated with the degree. There is no such thing as an international accreditation, which some fake schools claim.Here's some more info that goes into checking out programmatic accreditation, etc:www.usnews.com/higher-education/online-education/articles/2017-06-12/how-to-check-if-an-online-program-is-accredited-follow-5-steps

dynamic list of unrecognized accrediting agenciesen.wikipedia.org/wiki/List of unrecognized higher education accreditation organizationsN

I had a conversation once in the founding president of the Asian Theological Association, which accredits seminaries and Bible Schools in Asia. He listed off the different accreditation associations. There was another one that accredited the liberal seminaries in Asia, whose name I forget. ATA even accredited some seminaries in the US, like some Korean language. schools.The Association of Theological Schools accredited a lot of the seminaries, Assemblies of God Theological Seminary and Pentecostal Theological seminary. But they also accredit Dallas Theological Seminary and Harvard Divinity School.There is also the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools. I got the impression from him that this was not as prestigious as the ATA accreditation. I mentioned Luther Rice had TRACS accreditation, and he said they were one of the better TRACS schools.You do realize, don't you, that as new schools form, they have to go through a multi-year process to get accredited. I am an accreditation coordination for one type of accreditation (not theology) at my university, and I am on a committee for another type of accreditation. I am rather junior in my career for either role, but I'm in Asia and it's a different ball game out here. You start out with an application to be considered for accreditation, and then there is a multi-year process that might take five years before they are ready to consider you accredited. If you demonize non-accredited programs, you are opposing the founding and growth of new schools in a way, since schools start out unaccredited, at least by theological accreditation bodies.There are also regional forms of accreditation. But again, we are talking about a long and tedious process. With the two programs I work with, the regional accreditation body's application is probably a lot more involved and more tedious than the other, though putting together the applications is certainly no piece of cake. Fortunately, I did not have to do much of the writing by myself. I wrote up one section for one accreditation application, but mostly editted the other. It looks like I will have to do a lot more writing and revising going forward

It's a cost of doing business and a necessary barrier to entry. There are surely unaccredited schools where one could receive an excellent education, but if a student wants to be sure his/her education is legitimate and that his/her degree will be respected, he/she needs to attend an accredited school.

Thanks Dave Dorsey and Brotherjames

I appreciate the references you posted in this thread. I am sure some unaccredited schools provide a solid education. However, I believe many accredited schools.do the same. I do my best to counsel young people as if I was talking to my own child.

There are places for unaccredited schools who do provide quality education.

Re: With all of that,

I only KNOW of this because a friend was involved in buying the 'Hundreds of books' required by 'accreditation groups??' for Lee College(University) to aid in qualifying for higher accreditation. In one incident in NYC they found many books they needed. The SELLER was asking thousands +thousands of $. The assisting buyer (my friend) said 'There is no one else bidding, let's offer <$. I am sure we can save the school some money.'