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Preacher777

OTCP or others, a question about accredited schools

Friendly Face Posts: 434 **2/12/18 7:05 am**

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?

Thanks for your help

Dave Dorsey

[Insert Acts Pun Here] Posts: 13654 **2/12/18 8:11 am**

Great question. The Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation maintain lists of legitimate accrediting agencies.

https://ope.ed.gov/accreditation/agencies.aspx

http://www.chea.org/4DCGI/cms/review.html?Action=CMS_Document&DocID=38&MenuKey=main

A 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:

https://www.usnews.com/higher-education/online-education/articles/2017-06-12/how-to-check-if-an-online-program-is-accredited-follow-5-steps

brotherjames

Here you go

Acts-celerater Posts: 935 **2/12/18 10:54 am**

dynamic list of unrecognized accrediting agencies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unrecognized_higher_education_accreditation_organizations#N

Link

Acts-perienced Poster Posts: 11849 **2/12/18 12:25 pm**

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.
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Link

Dave Dorsey

[Insert Acts Pun Here] Posts: 13654 **2/12/18 12:32 pm**

Old Time Country Preacher

Acts-pert Poster Posts: 15564 **2/15/18 5:41 am**

Preacher777

Thanks Dave Dorsey and Brotherjames

Friendly Face Posts: 434 **2/15/18 8:58 am**

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.

Youth can love God, be excited but not see the big picture as to possible plans 10 or 20 years down the road concerning building upon an accredited degree, doors open in the church world but also with unsaved people who value education. I am Holy Spirit through and through and through. However, I teach that we don't need to lose some common sense and intellect to make room for the Holy Ghost!

brotherjames

With all of that,

Acts-celerater Posts: 935 **2/15/18 10:08 am**

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

Case in point: our Bible College is unaccredited because of the horribly expensive and time consuming procedures needed not to mention restrictions or unnecessary requirements that are imposed upon us. However, our 3 yr program qualified any student for the Assemblies of God license to preach credential. We are an excellent low cost alternative if you are called to the ministry. Students can also take online courses if they wish to the the AG Global University in order to get a degree. We issue a certificate not a diploma and we have students in ministry all over the world after doing this for 14 yrs. It is an excellent bible, pastoral, worship oriented education but not suitable for much else. But, there is a place and great need for this.

Dave Dorsey

Re: With all of that,

[Insert Acts Pun Here] Posts: 13654 **2/15/18 11:21 am**

Cojak

Re: With all of that,

01000001 01100011 01110100 01110011 Posts: 24276 **2/15/18 11:36 am**