The U.S. Department of Education Office of Post Secondary Education does have a data base of accredited and/or accrediting agencies or state approved agencies recognized by the U.S. Secretary of Education.
They are part of what is called a reliable authority as to the quality of post secondary education within the meaning of the Higher Education Act of 1965.The Higher Education Act, on information and belief, does not relate to religious education or metaphysical spirituality but in the secular area. The database of the Department of Education relates to those who elect to seek accreditation and have provided information to do so.
Also, there are institutions and programs that elect not to seek accreditation but never-the-less may provide a quality post secondary education. In other words, quality institutions and programs can be such without any stamp of accreditation approval.
This further leads to the controversy arising out of and relative to accreditation whether defined by the federal government or whether regarding state or other criteria. Accreditation, under the U.S. Department of Education rules relates to ensuring institutions of higher education have acceptable levels of quality.
On this matter, accrediting agencies of private educational institutions develop a national scope and criteria in which peer evaluations are used to assess whether or not those criteria are met for a particular school or institution. In other words, whether the school meets the agencies criteria. If they do, they are called accredited by the agency.
The Secretary of Education, per the rules and regulations, publishes a list of accrediting agencies that the Secretary determines to be reliable authorities as to the quality of education or training provided by the institutions or schools of higher education that they accredit.
The U.S. Secretary of Education does recognize state agencies for the approval of public post secondary vocational education and state agencies for the approval of nurse education for example. On this matter, institutions and programs outside of the U.S., that are accredited by recognized agencies, are no included in the U.S .Department of Education database.
The U.S. Department of Education recommends that the database be used for one source of qualitative information and that additional sources of qualitative information can be consulted as well.
In other words, the database that is provided as a public service is without any warranty or guarantee of any kind and the database does not constitute any endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education of any educational institution or programs.
Accreditation seeks to make some kind of evaluation that there is quality education based on the peer reviewed type of system. This is the gist of what accreditation can mean through the U.S. Department of Education as implemented by the Secretary of Education.
Dean James Selimos, Esq.
