How to Differentiate Accredited Online Colleges From Fake Diploma Mills
March 3, 2009 – 8:06 pmAlthough accredited online degree programs are becoming mainstream and many well established and big universities are offering these online courses, there are still some negative opinions held by people trying to further their education qualifications. It is actually true that during the inception of online education, degrees and diplomas were only offered by less than prestigious institutions and many graduates found that their hard earned qualifications were not accredited or widely recognized by companies. Years ago, there are also a rampant boom of poorly managed online education providers that are more into the idea of profiting from the explosive interest in further education for adults. These education scammers typically accept all student applications without much regard to their suitability for the online courses offered in order to receive as much class fees as possible. The online classes are often conducted in a sloppy manner by untrained instructors and there may not even be any final exams required to pass out from the online program. Students may just be awarded a certificate of attendance. These aspects actually seems to be very attractive to people who have less confidence in their academic capabilities or those who are not accepted into legitimate online education programs because they fail to meet the minimum education requisites. Think about it, how can you expect employers to perceive such online certificates as valuable skill sets when they are not awarded based on competency and many hours of rigorous training and studying? However, all these are pretty much things of the past. When well recognized colleges such as University of Illinois, Boston University etc come onto the playing field and offer accredited degree programs, they have to make sure that their awarded degrees and certificates are of a very high standard and are on par with similar programs held on campus. Many of these venerable institutions have been established over half a century and you can be sure that their management will not tarnish their own reputations or fail the trust of their graduates when seeking employment advancement with an online accredited degree certificate. These accredited learning programs may have more stringent admission requisites and degrees are not simply awarded on virtue of attendance. You have to really slog it out to earn your online degree with pride, such that you are able to advance your career with the newly earned online degree.
If you do a search for online degree programs on the internet today, you will find that there are millions of online university offers being listed. Each and every one of these are promising to provide you the best, fastest, cheapest, most easy, most convenient and recognized online degree in the topic of your choice. Many people are tempted by these online university programs and signed up in a hurry to get their distance MBA degrees only to feel cheated in the end by some so-called online colleges that are nothing more than diploma mills. Given the huge array of online education programs available nowadays, it can be pretty difficult for a student to separate the real educators who will grill and train a student stringently before awarding a rightful degree from the profiteers who only wanted to collect more course fees. Do not assume the search engines know how to differentiate them either and show you only the legitimate and accredited online degree courses. Learn to protect yourself from such fraudulent online colleges with this check list to keep in mind when you are going selecting an online university or college.
The first identification traits of legitimate online education providers are to check their accreditation status. Note that some institutions that are not traditional colleges can also be fully accredited and enjoy widespread recognition. These normally do not have the words college or university in their full names, but do not simply dismiss them as second rate or you may pass by a good opportunity in a high quality online education experience. While on the other hand, unscrupulous businesses know and prey on this pre-perception of students and gave their shady setup names that sound similar to established colleges. For example, they may add the words “online” or “open” to form “The Open University of New York” or “Online University of Berkley”. If the college only declare itself as having highly, nationwide, or worldwide accredited without stating specifically the regional accreditation body, or that it is still in progress of applying for accreditation, skip their offered degree programs as they very likely do not possess recognized accreditation in the workforce. Checking the accreditation status of your potential educational institutes cannot be over emphasized as you may end up with a useless certificate after paying through your nose that cannot help to improve your career and financial prospects.
Note that all education institutes will claim that they are fully accredited, since that is a good selling point for potential students/victims that are too lazy to do a proper check. Proper accreditation can mean the difference between a degree that gets you a new job or just having a nicely printed piece of certificate. Some shady institutes may also claim that they are in the process of getting a charter or accreditation status, and even show you the relevant documents supporting that claim. Good, but let the future students consider them when they are finally accredited. You have many other legitimate online schools and programs are already regionally accredited today. Others may even go the extra mile (in the wrong direction) by claiming to be accredited under fake accrediting boards, complete with impressive looking websites. Anyone can spoof a legitimate looking website, so check with the official sites from the United States Department of Education (USDE) or the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA). These two websites will list the organization that granted the college’s accreditation status. The best organizations are six regional accreditation councils which are as follows
New England Association of Schools and Colleges
North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement
Middle States Association of Schools and Colleges
Southern Association of Schools and Colleges
Western Association of Schools and Colleges
Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges
Do not choose an online degree program from a lesser known organization just because you do not meet the entry specifications listed on the web pages of a top tier college. All things being equal, employers will always prefer degrees conferred from the better colleges. You have to start fighting for your future career right now and not until you graduated and ended up with a non competitive degree. Keep submitting your applications for the accredited online degree programs from top tier universities, pester them with your appeals, convince them with other supporting credentials to support your application. Not many students do that these days, they just say forget it because they will not get in. Be different and show the admission officers some tenacity.
Choosing the online degree route usually means you will encounter problems with distance education, such as missing out on the experience of several years of full college life - the extra curricular activities, hostel life, personal tutoring etc. To compensate this lack, many online degree programs have incorporated a short on campus stint for such students. Usually these students get to study on the campus for one or two semester to undergo the same college experience as the other students. This can make many people finally feel like they are college students and belong to the college community. This may incur extra costs on your part because of accommodation and travel expenses; however we feel that such a campus learning experience is worth it. Many employers also perceive hybrid online learning graduates with better qualities compared to those that did the entire course online.
