Accreditation in Plain Language
Accreditation has a vocabulary of its own. These short explanations are written for anyone who needs to understand it — no background required.
The Basics
What is accreditation?
Accreditation is a review process in which a college or university has its work examined by other colleges and universities, measured against standards the institutions themselves have agreed on. An institution that meets those standards is accredited. An institution that does not is expected to fix the problem or lose its accreditation.
It is voluntary. No law requires a college to seek accreditation. Institutions do it because accreditation is what allows a degree to mean something beyond the campus that issued it — to employers, to graduate schools, to licensing boards, and to other colleges deciding whether to accept transfer credits.
Accreditation looks at the institution as a whole. It asks whether the institution has a mission that makes sense for a college or university, whether it has the money, faculty, and facilities to carry out that mission, and whether it can show that students are actually learning what the institution says they will learn.
It is not a one-time approval. Accredited institutions are reviewed again on a regular cycle and report to their accreditor in between. Accreditation can be withdrawn.
Accreditation is also not a government function. Accrediting organizations are private, and the people who conduct reviews are faculty and administrators from other member institutions rather than government employees. The federal government does play a role: it recognizes accrediting organizations, and federal student aid is available only at accredited institutions.
What accreditation does not do is rank institutions or guarantee any individual student’s experience. It establishes that an institution has met a shared threshold of quality — not that it is better than another accredited institution, and not that every program within it is equally strong.
Who accredits colleges — and who accredits the accreditors?
Colleges and universities are accredited by private accrediting organizations, not by the government. Those organizations are themselves reviewed — they must be recognized by the U.S. Department of Education, and that recognition is renewed periodically rather than granted permanently.
This is the question people ask when they hear that accreditation is voluntary and privately run: if a college chooses its own reviewer, what stops an accreditor from simply approving everyone? The answer is that accreditors do not appoint themselves. To be recognized, an accrediting organization must show the Department that its standards are rigorous, that its review process is sound, that it applies its own rules consistently, and that it acts when an institution falls short. An accreditor that fails that review can lose recognition.
Recognition matters practically as well. Federal student aid flows only to institutions accredited by a recognized accreditor, so recognition is what gives accreditation its weight.
The Commission on Colleges and Universities is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. Our standards are published, our policies are published, and the actions we take on institutions are disclosed publicly — which means our decisions can be examined by anyone, including by the Department when it reviews us.
There is also a second layer. Some accreditors, including this one, are additionally recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, a nongovernmental organization that reviews accreditors against its own standards.
If you want to confirm that an accreditor is recognized, the Department of Education publishes the list.
What is the difference between accrediting a college and accrediting a program?
Institutional accreditation covers a college or university as a whole. Programmatic accreditation covers one specific program within it — nursing, engineering, social work, law, and many others — and is granted by organizations that specialize in that field.
The Commission does institutional accreditation. We review the institution: its mission, its finances, its faculty, its governance, and whether students across the institution are learning what the institution says they will.
Programmatic accreditors do something narrower and deeper. A nursing accreditor examines a nursing program in detail — its clinical placements, its curriculum, its pass rates on licensing exams. It does not review the institution’s budget or its board.
Most institutions have both. A university might be institutionally accredited by the Commission and separately hold programmatic accreditation for its business school, its teacher preparation program, and its counseling program. It is completely normal for an institution to be accredited while a particular program within it is not separately accredited — most programs in most fields have no programmatic accreditor at all.
Here is where the difference has practical consequences. In some professions, you cannot sit for a licensing exam unless you graduated from a program with the right programmatic accreditation. That is true in various health professions, in some engineering and architecture licensure paths, and in law. Institutional accreditation alone will not satisfy those requirements.
So if you are enrolling in a program that leads to a license, check two things: that the institution is accredited, and that the specific program holds whatever programmatic accreditation your state’s licensing board requires. The licensing board is the authority on the second question — not the institution, and not us.
What accreditation does not tell you
Accreditation tells you that an institution has been reviewed against a set of shared standards and meets them. It does not tell you that one accredited institution is better than another, and it is not a ranking.
This distinction gets lost easily, so it is worth being specific about the limits.
Accreditation is not a score. Accredited institutions are not ordered against one another, and there is no such thing as being more accredited than another school. It is a threshold: an institution either meets the standards or it does not.
It is not a guarantee about your experience. Accreditation looks at the institution’s programs, resources, and evidence of student learning in the aggregate. It cannot promise that a particular course will be well taught, that you will graduate, or that you will find a job.
It is not an endorsement of every program. Institutional accreditation covers the institution as a whole. Individual programs vary in strength, and accreditation does not certify each one separately.
It is not a judgment about cost or value. Accreditation does not evaluate whether tuition is reasonable or whether a degree will pay off financially.
It is not permanent. Accreditation is maintained through ongoing review and can be withdrawn.
And it does not transfer responsibility. An accredited institution remains responsible for its own programs, its own finances, and its own students. Accreditation does not make the accreditor responsible for how an institution is run.
What accreditation does tell you is meaningful: that an institution has opened its work to outside examination, met standards its peers hold each other to, and remains subject to review. For someone deciding whether a school is legitimate, whether credits are likely to transfer, or whether a degree will be recognized, that is the information accreditation exists to provide.
The Process
What is peer review?
Peer review means that the people who examine a college’s work are faculty and administrators from other colleges and universities. They are not government officials, and they are not employees of the accrediting organization.
It works roughly like this. An institution first studies itself, documenting how it meets each standard and where it falls short. That documentation goes to a team of reviewers drawn from other member institutions, who read the evidence and then visit the campus to test what they read against what they find. The team reports what it found. A decision-making body — for the Commission, its Board of Trustees — acts on that report.
The reviewers are volunteers. They serve on teams while holding full-time jobs at their own institutions, and they are trained by the accreditor before serving.
Why build the system this way? Two reasons. The first is expertise. Someone who has run an institutional research office knows what good assessment data looks like and what a thin answer looks like. A provost who has managed a budget through an enrollment decline can tell the difference between a plan and a hope. That judgment is hard to replicate from outside the work.
The second is that peer review makes the standards belong to the institutions rather than to an outside authority. Member institutions set the standards, and member institutions apply them to each other. An institution being reviewed this year will send its own faculty to review someone else next year.
Peer review is not a rubber stamp, and the arrangement is not cozy. Reviewers identify problems, and institutions are required to address them. But the judgments come from people who understand the work, which is what makes them worth taking seriously.
What is reaffirmation?
Reaffirmation is the periodic review in which an already accredited institution demonstrates that it still meets the standards. Accreditation is not granted once and kept indefinitely — it has to be renewed.
For institutions accredited by the Commission, reaffirmation happens every 10 years, with a shorter interim review at roughly the midpoint. Between those reviews, institutions report annually.
The process takes years, not weeks. An institution typically spends a substantial period preparing: gathering evidence, examining its own practices, and documenting how it meets each standard. That self-study goes to a team of peer reviewers, who evaluate it and visit the campus. The Board of Trustees then acts.
It is worth saying plainly that reaffirmation is the normal, expected outcome. An institution going through reaffirmation is not in trouble and is not under suspicion. It is doing what every accredited institution does on schedule.
The point of repeating the review is that institutions change. Programs are added and dropped. Leadership turns over. Enrollment shifts, sometimes sharply. Finances change. An accreditation decision made a decade ago describes an institution that may no longer exist in the same form. Periodic review is how accreditation stays connected to what is actually happening on a campus.
Most institutions describe the preparation as demanding and the outcome as useful. Examining your own work closely enough to document it tends to surface things worth fixing, which is the intended effect rather than a side benefit.
What is a substantive change?
A substantive change is a significant change to an accredited institution — to what it teaches, where it teaches, how it delivers instruction, or how it is structured — that the institution must report to its accreditor. Some substantive changes require approval before they take effect.
The reason this requirement exists is straightforward. Accreditation was granted based on what reviewers examined. If an institution reviewed as a single-campus undergraduate college opens three branch campuses, adds doctoral programs, and moves half its instruction online, the accreditation decision no longer describes the institution that exists. Reporting substantive change is how accreditation keeps up.
Examples of the kinds of change that typically qualify: adding programs at a degree level the institution has not offered before, opening a new instructional site, substantially changing how a program is delivered, merging with or acquiring another institution, closing a program or a site, or significantly changing the institution’s mission.
For institutions, the practical point is timing. Substantive change requirements are about notifying the accreditor early enough that review can happen alongside the change rather than after it. An institution that builds a new program and reports it afterward has a harder problem than one that raised it during planning.
For everyone else, the useful takeaway is what this reveals about how accreditation works. It is not a periodic snapshot with nothing in between. Accredited institutions carry ongoing obligations, and significant changes are reviewed as they happen.
Institutions with questions about whether a planned change qualifies should talk with their Commission staff liaison before proceeding.
What is candidacy?
Candidacy is a status for institutions that are working toward accreditation and are under review, but are not yet accredited. It is preparation, not a form of accreditation, and the distinction matters.
An institution in candidacy has been examined enough for the accreditor to conclude that it is a plausible candidate — that it is legally authorized, actually operating, enrolling students, and financially capable of continuing. It has not yet demonstrated that it fully meets the standards.
Candidacy is time-limited. It is a period during which an institution builds toward full accreditation while reporting on its progress. It ends either in accreditation or in the candidacy being discontinued. An institution cannot remain a candidate indefinitely.
If you are considering enrolling at an institution in candidacy, there are things worth knowing.
Candidacy is a meaningful signal. An institution that has reached it has cleared real hurdles, and many well-regarded institutions went through candidacy on their way to accreditation.
But candidacy is not accreditation, and you should not assume it carries the same consequences. Whether credits will transfer, whether employers or graduate programs will recognize the credential, and whether the institution’s students are eligible for federal financial aid are separate questions with potentially different answers.
Before enrolling, ask the institution directly about its current status and what it means for aid and transfer, and confirm the aid question with Federal Student Aid at the U.S. Department of Education.
When Something Goes Wrong
What does it mean if a school is on sanction?
An institution on sanction is still accredited. Its students are still enrolled at an accredited institution, and their credits and degrees are not affected by the sanction itself.
A sanction means the Commission has identified something at the institution that does not meet our standards, has told the institution to correct it within a set period, and is monitoring whether that happens. Sanctions are disclosed publicly, along with a statement describing what is at issue.
We put those two paragraphs in that order deliberately, because the word “sanction” sounds more final than it is. Students at institutions on sanction often conclude that their school is closing or that their degree has become worthless. Neither follows from a sanction.
What a sanction does mean is that a real problem has been identified and there is a deadline attached to fixing it. The problem might be financial, or about governance, or about how the institution assesses student learning, or any number of things. The public disclosure statement for that institution explains which.
Sanctions end in one of two ways. Most commonly, the institution addresses the issue and the sanction is removed. Less commonly, the institution does not resolve it, and the Commission takes further action — which can include extending monitoring or, in serious cases, withdrawing accreditation. That last outcome is not the typical path and does not happen without notice.
If your institution is on sanction, three things are worth doing. Read the disclosure statement, which describes the actual issue rather than leaving you to guess. Ask your institution what it is doing about it and on what timeline — institutions on sanction are expected to be able to answer that. And keep going to class: your accreditation status has not changed, and interrupting your own progress because of a sanction is a real cost taken on for a risk that may not materialize.
What happens if an institution loses accreditation?
If an institution loses accreditation, it is no longer accredited by that accreditor, and its eligibility to participate in federal student aid programs is affected. Institutions in that position are required to plan for students who are partway through a program.
Losing accreditation is rare and it does not happen suddenly. It follows a period in which problems were identified, deadlines were set, and the institution had the opportunity to address them. Accreditors also publish their actions, so the situation is generally visible before a final decision.
If you are a student at an institution that has lost accreditation or may lose it, the most important thing to know is that you have options and that specific federal protections may apply to you. What those are depends on your situation — how far along you are, whether the institution continues operating, whether you can complete your program elsewhere, and what happened to aid you have already received.
We are deliberately not describing those federal rules in detail here, because they change and because we do not administer them. Getting a detail wrong on this page would be worse than sending you to the authority.
Here is where to go. Your institution is required to inform you of your options, including whether it has arranged for students to complete their programs. Federal Student Aid at the U.S. Department of Education can advise you about your loans and grants and about any relief you may qualify for. Your state’s higher education agency may also be able to help, particularly with records.
If your concern is that an institution is not meeting accreditation standards, that is something the Commission can review through our complaint process.
And if you are simply trying to check whether an institution is currently accredited, our directory shows current status, and the Department of Education maintains a database covering institutions accredited by any recognized accreditor.
What happens when a college closes?
When a college closes, its student records do not go to its accreditor. Records are normally transferred to a state agency or to another institution, and that is where you would request a transcript.
This is the question we receive most often about closed institutions, frequently from people who attended years or decades ago and now need to prove a credential to an employer, a licensing board, or a graduate program. It is a solvable problem, but the path is not obvious.
Start here. Our directory lists institutions that were accredited by the Commission, including those that have closed, and where we have information about where records went, it appears with the institution’s listing. We keep closed institutions listed rather than removing them, precisely so that former students have a record to point to.
If the listing does not tell you what you need, your state’s higher education agency is the next step — specifically the agency in the state where the institution operated, which is often the custodian of records for closed institutions in that state. If the institution operated in more than one state, start with the state where the campus you attended was located.
A few other things worth knowing.
An institution that closes is generally expected to have made arrangements for students who are partway through a program, often by agreement with another institution. If you were enrolled when the closure happened, ask about those arrangements.
If you had federal loans or grants at an institution that closed, Federal Student Aid can advise you. There are circumstances in which students at closed institutions may be eligible for relief on federal loans, and that determination is made by the Department of Education rather than by us.
And if your transcript search has stalled entirely, contact us. We may not hold your records, but we can often tell you who does.
What can an accreditor actually do?
An accreditor’s authority runs to one question: whether an institution meets the accreditor’s standards. It has real consequences attached to that question, and almost no authority over anything else.
What the Commission can do. We can review an institution against our standards and require it to produce evidence. We can require reports and additional monitoring. We can place an institution on sanction, with a deadline for correction. In serious cases we can withdraw accreditation, which affects the institution’s eligibility for federal student aid. And we can review complaints alleging that an accredited institution is not meeting our standards, or is not following its own published policies.
What we cannot do. We cannot change a grade, reverse an academic decision, or award a degree. We cannot reinstate a student or an employee. We cannot order a refund or award damages. We cannot resolve a dispute about whether one institution should accept credits from another — that decision belongs to the receiving institution. We cannot decide whether an individual qualifies for financial aid or how much. And we cannot review institutions we do not accredit.
The Commission is not an appeals board. When a complaint identifies a real problem, the outcome is a requirement placed on the institution — not a remedy for the individual who complained. That is worth understanding before filing, because the mismatch between what people hope for and what accreditation can deliver is the most common source of frustration with the process.
These limits are not oversights. Accreditation is designed to evaluate institutions, not to adjudicate individual disputes. An accreditor with authority to overturn academic decisions would be running institutions rather than reviewing them, and the independence that makes institutions worth accrediting would go with it.
If your concern falls outside what we can review, our complaints page lists where else to go — including state agencies, the Department of Education, and its Office for Civil Rights.