Factors to Consider When Assessing a Community College

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Here are some factors you should consider when you're assessing a community college to determine whether or not it's the right one for you.

Accreditation

Make sure that your community college is accredited so that the credits you earn and your degree have value. Accreditation means that a college or its programs meets or exceeds certain basic academic and financial standards set by private nonprofit organizations recognized as accrediting agencies by either the U.S. Department of Education or the Council of Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA).

In addition to accreditation at the institutional level, specialized programs such as nursing or veterinary technical training programs are also evaluated and accredited by professional or industry associations to make sure that their curricula adequately prepare students for their intended occupations.

Why should you care about accreditation? The Council of Higher Education Accreditation cites the following four main reasons (see "Informing the Public about Accreditation" on www.chea.org):

1. Students who want to receive federal (and sometimes state) grants and loans need to be enrolled in an accredited institution or program.
2. A college, university, or program needs to be accredited to be eligible for federal grants and loans or other federal funds.
3. Employers are often concerned about accreditation in several ways"when they provide tuition assistance to employees, when they evaluate your educational credentials for employment, and when they consider making a charitable donation to an institution.
4. State governments require accreditation when making state funds available to students or institutions and when they allow students to take state licensure examinations in some professional fields.
   There is also a fifth reason you should care about accreditation:
5. Most four-year colleges and universities will accept transfer credits only from community colleges that are accredited by a regional, national, or professional educational association.

Accreditation is a voluntary process and it sometimes takes several years for a new institution or program to receive accreditation. It's a goal to which legitimate educational institutions and their programs aspire. It is really an extra validation of quality for an institution and obviously necessary if it wants to receive federal funds. Accreditation also protects you against diploma mills that sell degrees to people, who then find out that the degree neither has value for employment nor transferability of credit to another institution.

If an institution or program is not yet accredited, it may be because it is new, has not yet met minimum standards to be eligible for accreditation, or is in the process of achieving it. Unaccredited institutions are not necessarily of poor quality; it means they have not been evaluated against a set of standards to determine the quality of their education and training.