There is much confusion about accreditation.  The basic choice for years has been between institutional (accrediting the school as a whole) and programmatic (accrediting some program of study or major within a school) accreditation.  However, in recent years, the issues surrounding this topic have become complex, controversial, and emotional.  It's taboo to talk about it in some places, and a matter of litigation in other places.  One dare not call someone's school "unaccredited" or a "diploma mill" unless you want to face a flurry of lawsuits, although if you want to see someplace where you can just "buy" a degree, then check out Lexington University (which is just a cut above places where you can get a customized diploma printed).  Even the best schools are confusing sometimes.  Certain phrases they use like "fully accredited" are meaningless since there's no such thing as partial accreditation.  There seems to be no definitive information on this subject.  No academics are researching the topic rigorously.  No one seems to have good answers to the pressing questions distance learners have -- Is my degree worthless?  Will it get me into grad school?  Will employers recognize it?  Am I just going to end up with a piece of paper to hang on the wall?  Will my unaccredited credits become accredited credits if the school I went to becomes accredited, and vice versa?   There are no easy answers to these questions.  It all depends.  At the risk of sticking my neck out, I'm going to provide some "as-is" guidance based on my years of experience, where I've seen everything from the success of big commercial programs to FBI raids on little, self-accredited programs.  I keep up with current events in this area, and I copy a lot of email traffic about it, so I thought I'd share what I can regarding the most frequently asked questions.

    John Bear, a recognized expert who dares to use the phrase diploma mill, estimates from his survey of Registrars, that 100% of institutions will accept credit from regionally-accredited schools, 70% of them will accept credit from non-residential (online) programs at regionally-accredited (RA) schools, and 30% of them will accept credit from DETC- and other-accredited schools.  Those are the numbers he posted in a discussion board at DegreeInfo.com, one of the many places where the lost souls of distance education hang out, OnlineCollegeDegree Info being another such place.  On the web, there are lots of DE guides and consultants like Bear, and I list some of them below.  My own professional consulting experience is with CJDLC and Excelsior College in the field of criminal justice.  My regular job is with a SACS-accredited school that offers both residential and non-residential programs.  There are lots of others like me in criminal justice who toil in these fields, but many are afraid to speak up as there are controversial issues in CJ education, such as the training/education divide, the qualifications of professors (there are many interlopers teaching in CJ, such as lawyers, sociologists, political scientists, social psychologists, and those only holding a Masters degree), programs that are still remnants of the "cop shop" days, and a general discomfort or unfamiliarity with online programs among faculty and administrators.  Most CJ programs are accredited by RA (regional accrediting) bodies, and every ten years, they go through a full-scale accreditation site visit with five-year progress reports in-between.  Despite the ideology that accreditation is everyone's business, large schools usually have a full-time staff who handle all the paperwork, and small schools divide up the workload or shuffle it off on a senior professor who doesn't have much else to do.  Each program should be continually doing curriculum reviews, program reviews, outcome assessments, and self-studies, but many don't find the time for this, and nothing really prepares you for the 10-year site visit anyway because it's mainly a luck of the draw matter.   

    There are six (6) main Regional Accrediting (RA) bodies: the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont); the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia); the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools (Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Panama); the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, New Mexico, South Dakota, Wisconsin, West Virginia, and Wyoming); the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (California, Hawaii, the territories of Guam, American Samoa, Federated States of Micronesia, Republic of Palau, Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands, the Pacific Basin, and East Asia); and the Northwest Association of Schools and Colleges (Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington).  In addition to these six, there are TWO MORE that can be considered spin-offs, or independent corporate entities, within the main RA entity, and those are the RAs which have pioneered the Best Practices movement in distance ed, and include the Western Association's Accrediting Commission for Senior Colleges and Universities (see WICHE Best Practices) and North Central's Higher Learning Commission (see NCA Best Practices).  If your school is accredited by one of these eight (8) groups, which receive U.S. Dept. of Education funding and operate primarily by site visit-peer review, then you need not worry -- your school has the best accreditation there is.  Most college presidents regard RA as the only game in town, and they will fight tooth and nail to keep the dance going with their RA partner.  Some regions have a reputation for being tougher than others, and the West, North Central, and Northeast are reputed to be more lenient about accreditation of online programs, while the South can be downright obstinate in its opposition to anything online.  Occasionally, some region goes on a "witch hunt" and orders a school to close down, puts it on some level of probation or warning, or gives it a fixed period of time to clean up its act, or else.  Bad things seem to happen more for political or financial conflict reasons than for the quality of instruction.  For example, the leadership at the school might be dictatorial or fraudulent, and the irony is that many educational leaders got their advanced degrees in Educational Administration online somewhere.  These sorts of things will trigger the worst that a RA body can do.  Much of it depends on luck of the draw, or upon who the faculty volunteers are that get picked to go around as peer reviewers for the site visits, as most bright, young, innovative professors do not volunteer for such service, and the visit teams are normally populated by mid-level administrators or department heads eager to move up the academic ladder and make their mark by being tough.  Site visitors are a mean lot, for the most part.  For example, if you're a liberal arts school which claims to produce long-term benefits for its graduates, they'll ask to see the "Mid-Career Life Satisfaction Surveys" from your Alumni that graduated years ago, and if you're a proprietary, technical school, or community college, they'll ask to see the "Standardized and Normed Results of Competency Exams" comparing your graduates with those who are Industry-trained or educated at comparable institutions.  Another thing that often happens is that the out-of-touch people back at the regional accreditation headquarters have gotten on some pedagogical bandwagon and stiffened up the criteria for something or other, but I'm sure you get the idea.  There are hundreds of unhandled, unheard, and unresolved complaints people have with the RA bodies every year, but the official ideology on most campuses is to shut up and take it.  Personnel turnover, all the way to the top, usually occurs after a bad RA review.

A NOTE ON PROPRIETARY EDUCATION

    One of the fastest-growing movements in the country right now is the rapid expansion of "for-profit" schools run by individuals or corporations.  They were once the subject of jokes because they advertised on matchbooks such as the famous Art Instruction School's "Tippy the Turtle" draw-me scholarship contests.  Today, they are the darlings of Wall Street and usually produce $3 million a year for partners and shareholders with an annual growth rate of 266% (according to studies by the Education Commission of the States).  The typical promise they make is to get you online, educated, and out of the classroom and into a high-paying, growth area faster than you can skim a set of Cliff Notes.  In other words, your education will be "practical" without any of that liberal arts, long-term stuff, and instructors without "real world" experience need not apply as online adjuncts.  A lot of money-hungry students buy into this talk about "hot fields" such as criminal justice, homeland security, computer forensics, information assurance, Internet marketing, heathcare technology, and so forth without realizing that today's "hot" field may become tomorrow's "dead" field.  Nevertheless, older students, minority students, busy students, and those who used to go to community college are now jumping at the chance of a "hot job" and will gladly pay anything for the convenience of accelerated or intensive online learning that takes little more than two years.

    Proprietary schools only physically account for about 8% of all colleges and universities nationwide, but they are growing at a rate of about 3% each year.  I know of no comparable numbers regarding the decline of regular, traditional schools, but would estimate it at being around 3% also.  Proprietary schools have played the accreditation game well, and in most cases today, are accredited by the exact same RA-bodies that regular schools are accredited by.  Their higher tuition and corporate-style, 24/7 support services mean that they can afford to not only meet (and in some cases exceed) certain accreditation criteria, but could conceivably dictate a role in the future of distance education.  It remains to be seen if that role includes a place for the traditional liberal arts, and whether the inherent problems of over-specialization can be avoided.  Some popular proprietary schools include the University of Phoenix, Corinthian Colleges, DeVry University, Strayer University, ITT Technical Institute, Jones International University, Kaplan College Online, Career Education Corp., ECPI Technical College, The Chubb Institute, and the National College of Business & Technology.  Look for them on a billboard near you. 

OTHER FORMS OF ACCREDITATION       

    Next best to RA-accreditation are DETC-accredited and ACCSCT-accredited schools, although according to some theories, next-best are former RA-schools that have decided by choice to forego regional accreditation.  Some excellent program-level accreditation schemes exist at this level, for example, in the fields of forestry, education, and fire safety.  In such places, the school as a whole may be unaccredited, but some specific program of study is accredited by a review board or some sort of professional association.  Criminal justice associations have been toying with this idea for years.  DETC appears to be the rising up-and-coming challenger to RA, and if there's one thing that's constant in the world of accreditation, it's that things are constantly changing.  ACCSCT primarily targets trade schools and vocational programs, and like IACET, is involved more in continuing education and training than formal, higher education.  DETC primarily targets schools with nontraditional things such as videotape courses, CD or DVD ROM courses, telephone courses, and online courses.  DETC, ACCSCT, and places like the University of Phoenix are also comfortable with credit by proficiency testing or portfolio assessments, such as DANTES, CLEP, AP, ACE, Berlitz, and DLPT programs, although a few RA schools may do these things if they haven't been shut down yet, like the way Co-ops were shut down about ten years ago, and replaced by Internships which are probably next on the list.  I would agree with Bear's estimate that the chances of getting your credits or degree from a DETC-accredited school accepted by a RA school (at any level, bachelors, masters, doctoral) are about thirty percent (30%).  These aren't impossible chances, and it's going to depend upon a number of circumstances, like what the application pool looks like in a given year, and what the job market is like (if you're applying for employment).  Ironically, DETC schools are often so desperate for professors in some areas (like criminal justice), that your chances of getting employment there (as a graduate of their own program) are often greater than your chances of getting a job or grad school appointment elsewhere.  Nepotism and hiring of one's own is also common in RA schools.  I don't know much about different employers if you're trying for promotion at work, since it varies by company ideology and the idiosyncrasies of the personnel officer and supervisors.  However, there is a federal crackdown coming, probably in 2004, on federal employees who have "beefed" up their resume with bogus degrees from diploma mills.  One of the misconceptions perpetuated by schools at the DETC/ACCSCT level is that their accrediting body is "recognized" by the U.S. Dept. of Education, and that's true only because the law requires every kind of accrediting body to be registered federally.  Recognition is not the same as accreditation.  A recognized school would not receive federal subsides for their accreditation process like the RA bodies do.  Further, there are a number of so-called accrediting agencies which are definitely not approved by the U.S. Dept. of Education, and any so-called "accreditation" by them is meaningless.  The State of Michigan maintains a good list of these "bogus" accreditation schemes.       

    Third in line, in my opinion, are schools that have some religious accreditation, although you've got to be careful since some so-called "Christian and Theological" accreditation schemes are worthless.  Many self-styled entrepreneurial ministers are fond of creating their own religious accreditation schemes, perhaps due to the power trip that comes from leading a large church.  Most theological seminaries are OK, however, and the basic principle at law is that no civil or secular authority takes precedence over the Church, although you'd be hard pressed to find extensive scholarly research on this aspect of Church and State separation in regard to distance education.  Some of the more well-known religious accrediting bodies include ACI and IUAA, but there are hundreds of others, almost one for each denomination, and then some that a particular religious school has set up for itself.  The self-accreditation route is probably looked down on the most, and these kinds of places are sometimes the target of FBI investigations and crackdowns.     

    Worst of all are schools that somebody, usually an state Attorney General, has put on a so-called "illegal list" or list of unaccredited colleges unsuitable, inappropriate, or unapproved by licensed employers in that state.  The state of Oregon has a good example of such an illegal list.  Contact the Attorney General in your state to see if there is such a list where you are at.  As far as I know, Oregon (html file) and Michigan (pdf file) are the only two places that have taken the lead in exposing "bad" schools.   I should also mention that there is a censure list put out for RA schools by the AAUP which should trigger a red flag if you are committed to academic freedom.  There is no one-stop place to find a database of fraudulent or bad schools in the United States, but the diploma mill industry is a $200 million industry in the United States, and such places have been known to fight back rather vigorously with their legal resources whenever anyone libels or slanders them.  At this lower levels, the pickings are what they are, and some good places may exist, but the controversies and stress levels are enormous.  Some institutions have cleaned up their act in response to a court order, others are operating precariously under continual court orders, and still others defy court orders and fly-by-night off to another locale or overseas.  Normally, a degree from a foreign institution, especially a doctorate, is a purely "research" degree, qualifying you to be a researcher, not a teacher, and graduating from a foreign school means you probably won't have a normal transcript showing courses you took.  Instead, you'll have indicators of the time you spent studying under a certain professor, reading their books, assisting with their publications.  The haphazard credit hour conversion system that exists in places like Europe and Asia is the regular subject of investigation by authorities.  In summary, if all you want to do is feel good about yourself, a degree from anyplace will be all right, but don't expect anybody to be able to tell you exactly what the future holds in terms of your specific chances for anything else.

    Finally, you should know that there is a movement afoot to repeal the federal government's 50% rule that is part of Title IV (The Student Financial Assistance Act).  The rule basically states that with a fully online school or any school where more than 50% of its courses are delivered online, the students there are ineligible for federal financial assistance.  The U.S. Secretary of Education has the authority to waive this rule for selected institutions, and has done so in a handful of cases, but since 2001 and most recently in 2003, the government's approach has been to allow such schools to apply for an exemption through the Distance Education Demonstration Program, and currently, there are about 25 schools participating in this program, the hope being, that online education can be studied more intensively, and it can be determined if such methods have come of age.      

A NOTE ON DISCIPLINARY INTEGRITY

    An academic discipline is just that -- a discipline, a distinct area of study carved out and separate from others, with its own paradigms and own research methods.  I know this sounds like disciplinary purity, as opposed to the interdisciplinary movement that took colleges by storm in the 1970s, but the fact of the matter is that today, we are living in an age when disciplinary integrity is important, in fact, extremely important.  You'll find hundreds of CJ programs, even the most respected ones, with "hybrid" names like the Department of Sociology, Social Work, Geography, and Criminal Justice.  Next most common is the two-discipline department, like Sociology and Criminal Justice, Political Science and Criminal Justice, Social Work and Criminal Justice, and Justice and Public Policy.  Then, you'll find plain old Sociology departments or the like offering what they call a "concentration" or "specialization" in Criminal Justice.  Please remember that a concentration is not a major, and it's not even a minor, and minors are practically worthless.  Imagine how worthless, then, is a "concentration" or "specialization."  Finally, there are one-department programs that are really Criminal Justice programs, but they go under a different name, like Social Ecology, Justice Studies, Legal Studies, or Criminology.  The bitter truth is that 60% of the criminal justice discipline is "captivated" like this in the "wrong" academic departments around the U.S., and here's the story on this matter.

    Political Science, Public Administration, Policy Studies, Sociology, Psychology, Social Work, and Criminology are historically older fields than Criminal Justice.  They've been producing Ph.D.s for a long time, and still crank them out at a unsurpassable pace.  Some estimates are that for every 1 new Ph.D. produced every year in criminal justice, there are at least 8 new Ph.D.s produced in these other fields where the "interloper" thinks they have the right to teach in Criminal Justice because either: (a) their dissertation topic touched on something to do with crime and justice; (b) one of their three or four comprehensive exam questions had to do with crime and justice; (c) their graduate program advisor or mentor told them that they should claim crime and justice as a "concentration" area, especially since CJ is a "hot" field right now; or (d) they once worked in law enforcement, courts, or corrections, and think this experience counts.  Add to this the fact that there is a glut (or surplus) of Ph.D.s on the market in the other fields, and a continual shortage of Ph.D.s in criminal justice, and you begin to see the market-driven economics.

    Most schools justify the strange name of their "hybrid" program on historical grounds.  Deans and Presidents are the most frequent exponents of this idea, and it is often the school's official party line.  They try to point to some mysterious point in the school's past when the program was first created, and say a variety of things: an anonymous benefactor gave us money as long as we promised to keep that name; a task force or committee looked into the matter long ago and found no problems; the alumni surveys show no problem; we find the mix of faculty helps to achieve critical thinking goals, etc.  The truth of the matter is that these Deans, Presidents, and Department Heads are financially exploiting the growing FTEs (Full Time Enrollments) in Criminal Justice courses to pay the unusually high salaries of the "deadwood" tenured faculty in those other disciplines that the college administrator can say belongs to the same department, and those faculty usually have to be given a teaching load reduction or sabbatical because their enrollments in the "regular" courses, in their "own" discipline are way down.

    My advice to students on this matter is twofold.  One, if you are considering such a program, be advised that you are heading into a stormy environment.  Chances are that the administration at that school, as well as the tenured faculty there do NOT really regard Criminal Justice as an autonomous discipline.  Most of them don't even really "care" about criminal justice as an autonomous discipline.  As a student, you will be forced time and time again to believe things like "all of criminal justice is just an extension of Durkheim's sociology of law" or "everything criminal justice has to say about administration and management is stolen from the field of public administration" or "criminal justice is just a subfield of political science."  The poor CJ professors who toil in these programs are both exploited and oppressed, so don't be surprised when they leave for another job while you are trying to finish your education.  Two, I would strongly encourage anyone taken in by all that "area of concentration" talk to find out exactly what will appear on your transcript.  What's on the diploma doesn't matter; it's what's on the transcript that counts.  You may have to ask the Registrar, or look at an actual alumni's transcript.  It will probably turn out that you can't even accumulate 18 semester hours of coursework with a prefix like CRJ, JUS, CRIM (which, along with a select few other prefixes, are the only established indicators of criminal justice coursework).  If the majority of courses on your transcript have a prefix like SOC, POL, INT (or many others that definitely do not indicate criminal justice coursework), this may point-blank make you ineligible for teaching in the criminal justice discipline, and those that have been getting away with it are living on borrowed time.  There's also the strong possibility that, despite being reassured differently by your advisor who swears that your degree is in criminal justice, the transcript issued by your school upon graduation may clearly indicate that your degree is in some other field, and a little line added after it with words like "concentration area in criminal justice" doesn't count for much, if at all in most places that will be doing the hiring.  Likewise, if you have credits from an unaccredited school and they get accredited and go back to re-issue or re-stamp your transcript, this will most likely be caught by someone, and their accreditation status during the years you attended may or may not make a difference, but you'll find the most common response is to just shut the door in your face because there's the slightest, twinge-of-doubt.