How To Tell If Your Online University Is A Scam
The recent rise in online universities opens the door for many to complete their degree and academic work via the internet. Google “online degrees” and you get a whopping 28,300,000 results. This list includes everything from colleges and universities, to companies that help facilitate your online learning experience. But the new frontier in education does not come without its challenges. Getting a degree online provides some amazing opportunities for learning, but along with it come the scam with diploma mills, and other fraudulent degrees. Investigations into for-profit online universities over financial aid issues, recruiting, and student completion, have raised questions of the validity of degrees from online universities. Recent media and federal investigations have brought the issue into the spotlight. Whether you are a student of an online university, or looking to teach for one, the question must be raised, “Is my university a valid one or a scam?” There are some easy ways to find out.
An initial, small way is to look at the domain name of the potential university. The nonprofit Educause, administers have domain names with the ".edu" suffix and these are only given to colleges and universities that are accredited by the Department of Education. Don’t see ".edu" in the domain name? Run away and do so quickly.
The clearest way of to find out is through accreditation. Easy enough? Not so fast, defining college accreditation is a vague term, and some colleges and universities take advantage of that. We can narrow the field a bit by looking to see what the Department of Education recognizes for financial aid. According to the Department of Education, it recognizes over 6,900 post-secondary education institutions and programs. That helps some, but keep in mind you want your degree to be recognized for the rigor by other universities. Suppose you want to go on for further academic work, study, or teach for a university. You are going to find that this is not enough and just using the Department of Education's list as your benchmark, some doors may still be closed. The “gold standard” is the regional accreditation, and you should ensure that the university you wish to attend, is accredited by such. There are six regional associations that review the academic rigor of colleges and universities throughout the United States. This is not an easy process, and the work can be enormous. However, it ensures that the degree you are getting is valid and has met a minimum standard. Not having a degree from a regionally accredited university is selling yourself short and you may find problems down the road when you apply for graduate school, to teach, or for employment.
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