How to Check If a College Is Accredited

If you are comparing colleges, accreditation should be the very first thing you check — before tuition, before campus tours, before anything else. Accreditation is a voluntary, nongovernmental peer-review process in which an independent agency evaluates an institution or program against established quality standards. The U.S. Department of Education does not accredit schools directly; instead, the Secretary of Education recognizes specific accrediting agencies as reliable authorities on educational quality.

Why does this matter to you personally? Because accreditation status determines three critical things. First, your eligibility for federal financial aid. Under Title IV of the Higher Education Act, you must attend an institution accredited by a U.S. Department of Education-recognized agency to receive Pell Grants, federal student loans, or work-study funds. Second, your ability to transfer credits. Most accredited institutions will only accept transfer credits from other accredited schools, so attending an unaccredited college could lock you into one path with no flexibility. Third, your degree’s value in the job market.

Many employers — including the entire federal government — only recognize degrees from accredited institutions. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management has explicitly stated that degrees from diploma mills will not be accepted for qualifying for federal positions, student loan repayment benefits, or tuition assistance.

You should understand that accreditation is not permanent. Schools must undergo periodic reviews — typically every few years up to ten years — to maintain their accredited status. This means a school that was accredited five years ago could have lost that status since then.

You will encounter two types of accreditation in your research, and you may need to verify both depending on your career goals.

Institutional accreditation evaluates an entire college or university — its governance, finances, faculty qualifications, student support services, and academic programs. Institutional accreditors are either regional or national in scope, though the U.S. Department of Education eliminated the formal distinction between the two in 2020. As of 2024, ED recognizes 24 institutional accrediting agencies. Institutional accreditation is what makes a school eligible for Title IV federal student aid. If you are choosing between schools for a general degree — say, a bachelor’s in business or psychology — institutional accreditation is your primary concern.

Programmatic accreditation (also called specialized accreditation) evaluates specific programs, departments, or schools within an institution. For example, AACSB accredits business programs, ABET accredits engineering and computing programs, and CCNE accredits nursing programs. You need to pay attention to programmatic accreditation if you plan to enter a licensed profession. In fields like nursing, engineering, social work, law, and education, graduating from a program with the correct programmatic accreditation may be required to sit for licensure exams or qualify for jobs. A school can hold institutional accreditation while its individual programs lack programmatic accreditation — and vice versa in rare cases for freestanding professional schools.

You do not need to pay anyone to check accreditation. Three free, authoritative databases give you everything you need. Here is how to use each one.

Database 1: U.S. Department of Education — Database of Accredited Postsecondary Institutions and Programs (DAPIP). This is the federal government’s official list. It contains information reported directly by ED-recognized accrediting agencies and state approval agencies. You can search by institution name, state, or accrediting agency. If a school appears in this database with an active accreditation status, it is accredited by an agency recognized by the U.S. Secretary of Education as a reliable authority.

Database 2: Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) Database. CHEA is the national organization that recognizes accrediting agencies. Its database allows you to search over 8,200 accredited institutions and over 44,000 accredited programs. CHEA recognition and ED recognition overlap but are not identical — some agencies are recognized by one but not the other. Checking both databases gives you the most complete picture.

Database 3: NCES College Navigator. The National Center for Education Statistics maintains this free tool, which provides accreditation information alongside data on tuition, graduation rates, financial aid, and campus safety for over 7,000 institutions. It is a useful one-stop resource for verifying accreditation and comparing schools at the same time.

For the most thorough verification, search your school in all three databases. If a school does not appear in any of them, that is a significant red flag.

Not all organizations that call themselves accreditors are legitimate. The U.S. Department of Education and CHEA each maintain lists of recognized accrediting agencies, and these are the only lists that matter when you are evaluating a school’s credibility.

Institutional accreditors recognized by ED include agencies such as the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE), the New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE), the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU), the WASC Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC), and the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC). As of March 2024, ED recognizes 37 accrediting agencies for Title IV purposes, including both institutional and programmatic accreditors.

Programmatic accreditors focus on specific disciplines. Examples include AACSB International for business schools, ABET for engineering and computing, CCNE and ACEN for nursing, CSWE for social work, and ABA for law programs. If you plan to pursue a licensed profession, the specific programmatic accreditor your state licensing board requires is non-negotiable — it does not matter how prestigious a school seems if its program lacks the right accreditation for your career path.
You can view the complete list of ED-recognized agencies at the U.S. Department of Education’s accreditation page and the complete list of CHEA-recognized agencies on the CHEA website. If an accrediting agency does not appear on either list, it may be what the U.S. Department of Education calls an “accreditation mill.”

Diploma mills are organizations that sell credentials without requiring meaningful coursework, and they are more sophisticated than you might expect. The U.S. Department of Education warns that many diploma mills claim accreditation, but their accreditation comes from bogus agencies — called “accreditation mills” — that they themselves created. These fake accrediting agencies often have impressive-sounding names and claim to be international or worldwide authorities.

Here are the warning signs you should watch for. The school promises you can earn a degree in weeks or months rather than years. The school charges a flat fee for an entire degree rather than per-credit or per-course tuition. Admission requires nothing more than payment — no transcripts, test scores, or academic records. The school’s name closely mimics a well-known, accredited institution. The school lists no verifiable faculty with real academic credentials. The accrediting agency listed on the school’s website does not appear in either the ED or CHEA databases.

You should also know that a “.edu” web address is not a guarantee of legitimacy. While a 2001 U.S. Department of Commerce ruling restricted new “.edu” domains to accredited institutions, thousands of “.edu” domains were grandfathered in from before that policy took effect.

The consequences of falling for a diploma mill are severe. Employers who discover a fraudulent degree may terminate you. The federal government explicitly rejects diploma-mill credentials for government positions. And you will have no access to federal financial aid, no ability to transfer credits, and no path to graduate school.

Accreditation is not permanent, and schools can lose it. If this happens while you are enrolled, you need to understand your options and act quickly.

When a school loses accreditation, it can no longer offer federal financial aid to students. Your existing credits may become difficult or impossible to transfer to other accredited institutions. Depending on the timing, your degree itself may lose value in the eyes of employers and graduate schools. The accrediting agency typically provides a public notice and a timeline, and the school is required to inform enrolled students.

If you learn your school is at risk of losing accreditation — or has already lost it — take these steps. First, contact your school’s financial aid office immediately to understand how your current aid will be affected and what deadlines you face. Second, research transfer options at accredited institutions while your credits still carry maximum value. Third, request official transcripts now, before any administrative disruptions make them harder to obtain. Fourth, file a complaint with your state’s higher education agency if you believe the school misrepresented its accreditation status.

You can monitor accreditation actions by checking the U.S. Department of Education’s accreditation database periodically or by following announcements from the relevant accrediting agency. Some accrediting agencies, like WSCUC, publish their action letters publicly, making it easier for you to stay informed.