Council of Higher Education Accreditation warns about diploma- and accreditation mills!
In their quest for higher education and training, students and the public in the United States sometimes encounter “diploma mills”—dubious providers of educational offerings or operations that offer certificates and degrees that are considered bogus. They may also encounter “accreditation mills”—dubious providers of accreditation and quality assurance or operations that offer a certification of quality of institutions that is considered bogus.
How Can You Tell the Good from the Bad?
Awareness is the key!
Web page advertisements that contain text, images, seals, and any profound sounding designations that a vocational training school and their programs are accredited containing words such as approved, accredited, accreditation pending, authorized, chartered, licensed, empowered, sponsored, recognized, and registered should be critically examined to determine whether these claims are merely common catch phrases, or the assertions are legit.
For Example:
Credibility is One Important Criteria!
One important aspect to consider when selecting an online learning program is the school's reputation. The school must be honest and credible in their dealings with the public, have a clean record, and should be accredited by the right organization!
For example, here is a "bad" example:
A well advertised Medical Assistant Training School which offers medical assistant distance education and other related training courses online for around six-hundred dollars describes itself as a worldwide leader in online medical assistant education and an accredited medical assistant school. However, it was discovered that this school's webmaster/website manager had lifted substantial amounts of text and images from the Medical Assistant Net home page and featured it without authorization as their own work to support their efforts to enroll medical assistant students into their program. By not having obtained our permission the owner of this medical assistant distance education website inadvertently violated the copyrights of Medical Assistant Net.
Medical Assistant Net had no choice but to record all details and evidence involving these copyright violations and then reported the offending website to the GoDaddy.com and Yahoo! (the school's web hosting service providers) respectively. DMCA agents investigated the case and took appropriate action. Violating someone else's copyrights in such a manner is a punishable federal offense.
Needless to say, with that sort of callous behavior on the Internet this online medical assistant training school's integrity and credibility, as we see it, is totally shot!
Anyone Searching for Quality Education--Use Common Sense!!!
It is always prudent before joining any programs to get in touch with the provider of the courses to ask questions, and to also contact the accrediting organization to find out whether a program is truly legitimately accredited by them, and to confirm the quality of the online training courses.
General Rule Is:
Online courses are seldom accredited, or approved by the board of education unless they truly have met or exceed established national standards. The application process for reviews and approval is tedious and lengthy.
Online training providers, non-traditional universities, and so called virtual colleges who offer distance learning programs have different accreditation standards than brick-and-mortar universities, colleges, and vocational training institutions. Those institutions who went through the process and are approved will always have their program's accreditation status visibly posted on their Web site and online course catalogs.
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