What is the Benefit of Having an Accredited Degree in the Job Market?
How will employers view an accredited degree versus a non-accredited degree?
The Benefits of Having a Degree
The benefits of having a degree in the job market are tremendous. Workers with an associate's degree earn an average of 25% more than workers with only a high school diploma, and workers with a bachelor's earn over 70% more. For many jobs, having a degree is necessary to be hired at all, or to be promoted beyond a certain level. The benefits of higher education are projected to increase in coming years.
The Importance of Being Accredited
However, it cannot be just any degree. Obtaining an accredited degree is absolutely essential if you hope to garner the career success you deserve. Accreditation is a process in which outside agencies evaluate a school's programs to ensure that they meet applicable academic standards. Without accreditation, it is impossible for employers to know whether your diploma is from a legitimate institution or whether it is from a diploma mill—a company that offers degrees in exchange for money and little academic work. Academic institutions are equally skeptical of degrees from non-accredited schools, so it can be extremely difficult to transfer credits from a non-accredited institution to an accredited one.
Knowing your Accreditation Agencies
When investigating your school's accreditation status, you should also be sure that the accreditation agency is itself accredited. Just like there are diploma mills, there are accreditation mills that provide meaningless certifications to schools. For a list of valid accreditation agencies, you can go to the websites for the U.S. Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education.
There can be differences between legitimate accreditation agencies as well. For example, a certification from the Distance Education Training Council doesn't always mean that credits from that institution will be transferable to other academic institutions. If your school is certified by the DETC and you're planning on attending another institution in the future, you should check your prospective institution's policy on accepting transfer credits. The most widely accepted accreditation agencies are the regional agencies, such as the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. These are the same agencies that accredit non-digital schools and accreditation from them is as universally accepted as you can get.
A degree is a fantastic asset in today's job market. It will exponentially increase the number of jobs you can do and the promotions you will be eligible for. In order to reap the benefits of having a degree, make sure you get it from an accredited institution. The U.S. Department of Education has an easy-to-use search engine for exactly this purpose: http://www.ope.ed.gov/accreditation/Search.aspx .
Article Resources:
The Database of Accredited Postsecondary Institutions and Programshttp://ope.ed.gov/accreditation/
College Accreditation in the United States
http://www.ed.gov/admins/finaid/accred/index.html
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