What is accreditation?
Accreditation is a peer review group based on academic requirements that reviews schools on the basis of their vision, mission, goals, admission requirements, quality of education, reputation of the faculty/ departments and services provided to the students.
When is a school not accredited?
There are certain conditions for a school/educational institution for not being accredited:
- The institution is new
- They do not live up to the criteria of the accreditation board
- The institution waiting to be reviewed
- The institution only provides diploma study which might be just another get-rich scam
Signs that an institution is not accredited
The following are signs of an institution not being accredited:
- When you’re applying, ask the institution for placement services and academic counselling. If they hesitate to give you the required information, that’s a big RED flag.
- Check alumni testimonials. The disreputable colleges will provide falsified testimonials that say everything is awesome.
- Don’t be fooled by a name: there are cases of colleges using incorrect spelling or switching college to college to attempt to scam learners. You’re thinking of Oxford University when you’re dealing with English skills but Oxford College is a scam.
- Be careful if a college is extremely pushy, especially about the financial assistance packages they “give.” If you are being hunted by overly engaging financial assistance counselors, that is a very poor indication.
How do I know if a provider/course is registered?
If you’d like to check if a provider/course is registered or not, the easiest way to do it by checking the national register. The courses/providers must be registered to a national standard in Australia in order to be considered accredited. Other things that you can find from the national register are as follows :
- Category of the providers’ registration (University(Australian or overseas), higher education)
- The registered time period (7 years or less)
- Self-accreditation or national accreditation
- Course name
- Course re-accreditation date
- Link to providers’ page for student experience and graduate employment opportunities
For VET provider :
If you are looking to study VET in Australia, you can find information about the college in the official Australian VET website :
Visit the website and go to the National Register of VET and search for the college.
For higher education
If you are looking to get your higher education in Australia, you can find information about the colleges in the given website:
www.teqsa.gov.au/national-register
You can input the name of the college in the search bar and see if the provider/course is registered or not.
Self accreditation
There are some colleges who do not have any accreditation with the national boards and like to provide credit only based on their own set of accreditation standards.
What is the Benefit of Having an Accredited Degree in the Job Market?
There are tremendous advantages of getting a degree on the job market. Workers with an associate degree receive an average of 25% more than employees with a high school diploma, and employees with a bachelor degree receive more than 70% more. Having a degree is required for many jobs to be recruited or promoted beyond a certain level at all.
What is CRICOS?
CRICOS stands for the Commonwealth Register of Institutions and Courses for Overseas Students and is intended to guarantee excellent quality education for global learners studying in Australia and New Zealand. To meet the requirements set out in the National Code of Practice established to protect the interests of international students studying on Australian soil, all universities and colleges in Australia that accept international students must be registered with CRICOS.
CRICOS stands for the Commonwealth Register of Institutions and Courses for Overseas Students and is intended to guarantee excellent quality education for global learners studying in Australia and New Zealand. To meet the requirements set out in the National Code of Practice established to protect the interests of international students studying on Australian soil, all universities and colleges in Australia that accept international students must be registered with CRICOS.
But, is accreditation actually necessary?
Actually, no — there are some colleges offering practical training that really does not require accreditation to support their graduates. These include schools of technology and some schools of art. In many cases, you don’t need to be accredited because your portfolio or tech abilities will talk for themselves.