Who Determines Accreditation in the United States?

Accreditation
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Accreditation
Educational accreditation is a quality assurance process, which ascertains the quality of educational institutions by delegating the responsibility to an external body. Critical to the debate is the fact that attending an accredited school comes with personal benefits. For instance, attending accredited schools increases marketability in the job market because most employers trust employees with certificates from accredited institutions. The upcoming discussion focuses on specialized/programmatic accreditation, accrediting agencies, transfer of credits, and the problems that could result from government accreditation.
Apparently, national and regional are self-explanatory implying that it is important to discuss the specialized or programmatic accreditation. It follows that programmatic accreditation focuses on special features within departments of an already accredited institution. As mentioned earlier, accreditation is delegated to external bodies for different professions and institutions. For instance, programmatic accreditation for lawyers is a responsibility of the American Bar Association while the American Medical Association is responsible for medical programs. Simply put, accreditation in the United States is an obligation of private educational associations.
It is a difficult task to transfer credits between national and regionally accredited institutions. This owes to factors such as college or state policies, residency requirements, appropriate academic level, accreditation and educational equality, and appropriateness of course content. Evidently, accreditation of educational institutions is not a government responsibility because of problems that could result from such accreditation. This owes to the fact that allowing the government to accredit educational institutions could result in erosion of educational diversity and diminish educational flexibility.