Accreditation: What is it really worth?

What is accreditation?

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, "accreditation" means

the fact of being officially recognized, accepted, or approved of, or the act of officially recognizing, accepting, or approving of something

While, Wikipedia defines it as:

Accreditation is the process in which certification of competency, authority, or credibility is presented.

And, it also defines:

Educational accreditation is a type of quality assurance process under which services and operations of educational institutions or programs are evaluated and verified by an external body to determine if applicable and recognized standards are met. If standards are met, accredited status is granted by the appropriate agency.

In other words, accreditation means that someone, Mr. A, says that some company or organization, Ms. C, provides services that are up to our standards in that industry. So, if you trust Mr. A enough, you may trust that Ms. C is good enough.

Two obvious questions should rise in your mind:

1. Who says that Mr. A is worth my trust?
2. According to what criteria does A say that C is good?

If you follow the line of thought of the 1st question, you may reach a dead end with Governmental organizations involved in the accreditation process, which, in turn, you may doubt for being good enough or not!

While the second question is the important one, rarely would you be able to find a clear document describing the criteria. And, if you found it, it WILL NOT provide you with the information that helps you, as an end user, understanding the benefits of accreditation, if any, to you!

We can never claim that accreditation is not useful to the learner, nor can we claim that the accreditation organizations provide no value to the learning community. But, we can claim confidently that the Accreditation Process is, generally, overrated.

Also, you have to recognize that there is a lot of controversy about accreditation and there are many fake organizations that claim accreditation. You may read articles like:

What is a fake accrediting agency? by Aaron Profitt

8 Ways to Find Out If an Online Degree is a Scam or the Real Deal

Accreditation: When Talking About Higher Education, Nothing Could Be More Relevant – Or Controversial BY JESSE NICKLES

So, what should you do when deciding about registering for a training course?

Our Advice

In the Academy of Knowledge, we are concerned with providing training to our learner community. That is why we will discuss some ideas regarding the "Evaluation" of the training courses you may consider having.

Course Description

Any course offered by training or educational organization should have a publicly displayed course description. The description should contain at least the course title and one paragraph explaining what the course is about. Some better descriptions may contain some or all of:

• Title
• Short description
• Target audience
• Learning objectives (or ILO's)
• Topics (Course content)
• Schedule (Date, time)
• Location (Venue)
• Registration Fees
• What is included in the fees?

One more VERY important piece of information is: Who is the instructor? (Which we will get back to later)

Read the information provided by the company/university/person and evaluate weather that will be useful to you or not. In case you do not know much about the subject you want to learn about, try reaching for someone who has more experience seeking their advice.

The Instructor

For any course, there is at least one instructor who prepared the course material and logical sequence of ideas. Usually, the one(s) who prepared the course is the one(s) who deliver it in class or online. Regardless of the ongoing trials to standardize the training and educational process, we still have to recognize the the instructor is the core of the process.

If you are considering a course, you should try to get as much information about the instructor as possible. Years ago, it was extremely hard to get information about the instructors, that is why people relied on the institutions/companies to select the best instructors for them.

You have probably been through the experience of attending a course in some university or training institution where the instructor was a complete mess. This was not uncommon until we became capable of knowing a lot about the instructor before registering to the course.

This condition is not fully avoidable, but you may use any information about the instructor to search for him/her on the net and try to find out:

• What they have delivered before?
• What practical experience they have in the field they are instructing?
• What, if any, does previous students/trainees say about them?
• What online material do they provide for free for the learning community?

One more very important piece or information would be a recorded lecture or lesson that you can watch! If you get that, you get to see them in action! 

Do NOT Rely on the Institution's Reputation

We may be shooting ourselves in the foot by saying this!

Any institution tries to build a brand (a reputation) for itself in the market they serve. Customers/Learners/ Students rely on that reputation to create an initial idea about how good the learning experience will be.

Unfortunately, our experience in the education market have provided us with widely different results. Many institutions with great reputation do not really care anymore about the learning experience of their learners. That is a direct result of the learners' attitude "If it is the Xyz institute, then the course must be good" ...

Always get as much information as you can about the course you plan to pay money, time and energy to attend. Do the evaluation yourself, ask the online and offline communities, then decide.

And always, Learn, Grow, Excel!