Benefits Of Regionally Accredited Online Universities

Accreditation is a practice which helps the students to figure out authenticity of the degree offered by universities. A detailed understanding of accreditation can help students to choose the best university, which shall eventually help to make optimum utilization of effort and money and avoiding disappointment.

Accreditation is done by an accrediting body which may be regional or national. These bodies review the process of admission and course of study and these bodies must be recognized by the department of education of the particular nation.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, more than 85 percent of universities in the USA are regionally accredited. This ensures the quality of education delivered to students meets certain standards. It is cumbersome to determine which accreditation is better because each accreditation has specific criteria and objective. But most employers prefer regional accreditation due to its rigor. “Standards of practice” make regional accreditation to be thought of as better compared to national accreditation.

Regional accreditation is considered important for comparison of universities. If a school is regionally accredited, it means that it satisfies certain standards of all the other universities that are accredited similarly in the same region/province. Most of the students have pre-conceived notions that national accreditation is more appropriate, acceptable and has a wider reach than regional accreditation. But that is not the case. National accredited universities are more focused on profit making or are affiliated with religion and offer vocational or technical programs

Value for Money

Regionally accredited online universities are more pocket-friendly as compared to campus-based universities. Apart from the economic benefit, such universities offer they also give students the leverage to gain a plethora of knowledge at their convenient location which means they do not have to travel all the way to school. Students have to travel places to be part of best of the universities and incur endless expenses like traveling, accommodation, food, etc. Regionally accredited online universities eliminate all such expenses making it a financially viable option. Another benefit such universities offer is that students can work concurrently along with studies, which will give them a sense of responsibility and help them manage their expenses.

Comfort:

Regionally accredited online universities allow students to attend online lectures as per their convenience. Such universities are very much beneficial for working people who have erratic work schedules online lectures conducted can be streamed live or one can have access to pre-recorded lectures. Students can have a discussion with professors to address their queries which happen either through video chat/ audio chat/ email. Thus, such universities are very convenient due to the bunch of benefits it offers.

Personalization:

Regionally accredited online universities aids in accommodating more students when compared with campus-based universities. Students can have a variety of programs choose from which are tailored to meet the current standards and interest of the students thus enabling customization of course of study which is particularly the case for massively open online courses (MOOCs), which is available for everyone at an affordable cost. Some universities have competency-based courses to offer, which enables the students to earn credit from college for learning and expertise gained somewhere else.

Association:

Regionally accredited online universities can surpass the hurdles of geography. Most campus-based universities lack geographical diversities of students and are dominated by local students but regionally accredited online universities attract students from various regions which will eliminate cross-cultural barrier and promote peer-to-peer learning. Since such universities attract talent from different cultures and regions they enable students to discuss on topics which increase awareness of different cultures among the students which will help overcome the cultural barrier and bring a sense of unity. Another key benefit regionally accredited online universities offer is it makes students who are weak at communication in classroom or students who are not comfortable voicing their opinion due to peer pressure participate in an online discussion due to the comfort and convenience it offers.