Accreditation

Accreditation is a process of external quality review created and used by higher education to scrutinize colleges, universities and programs for quality assurance and quality improvement. Although accreditation is carried out by private, nonprofit organizations, the federal government relies on accreditation to assure the quality of institutions and programs for which the government provides federal aid to students. While U.S. law and regulations on accreditation most directly address accrediting organizations, they have an impact on accredited higher education institutions and programs and on the requirements of accrediting organizations.

= Available only to members of the contributing association