Online For-Profits ONLY North Central Association?

Question by Tropical Steve: Online For-Profits ONLY North Central Association?
I transitioned to an online university for its flexibility in 2008, and am anticipating my conferral date sometime in 2011 (BA).

That said, and the fact that I've since become skeptical of online schools (not the lack of education, but their businesses in general, I'm very satisfied with my education), I CHALLENGE anyone to find a major online institution that is accredited by by anyone other that the North Central Association.

I can't get past the fact that no matter where the institution is actually located, it is accredited by NCA (ie: UoP, American InterContinental, Concord Law School, ect)

Anyone have any insight?


Best answer:

Answer by CoachT
* Excelsior College (NY) - Middle States Association
* Thomas Edison State College (NJ) - Middle States Association
* Charter Oak State College (Ct) - New England Association
* Western Governors University (UT) - Northwest Commission

Those are four of the most significant online institutions in the country - having come to the table much earlier than did the likes of UoP or AIU. They're also not for-profit, but being a for-profit wasn't part of your challenge. ?


NorthCentral Association has a pretty huge geographic area of responsibility. Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Particularly when compared to the smaller associations like New England Association (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont) or Western (California, Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa, Micronesia, Palau, and Northern Marianas Islands.) so it stands to reason that they'd have more schools in their jurisdiction and therefor more online schools as well.

SACS (reputed to be the strictest of the regional accreditors) accredited American Intercontinental University (AIU) from 1987-2009 before they moved to NCA (reputed to be the least strict regional accreditor) jurisdiction. South University (Savannah Georgia) is an example of a for-profit/proprietary college operating significantly online accredited by SACS.

There are numerous examples of online programs within traditional colleges that are accredited by each one of the regional accreditors. These though also aren't usually for-profit colleges/universities. But, each of the regional accreditors do have examples of for-profit colleges on-the-ground within their jurisdiction that they accredit.

It seems to me that your issue with online schools is not their accreditor or that they're online. It seems to me that you don't like the for-profit business model. If you look around at a lot of the traditional college's online programs, I think you'll find that there are far fewer for-profits online than there are non-profit and privates teaching online - it's just that those for-profits advertise heavily and, being open admission, tend to be huge. The for-profits tend to concentrate their efforts online and the privates/publics concentrate in the classroom. All three business models are offering both modes of delivery though - UoP has classroom and Harvard is online.

I tend to prefer privates myself. I don't like the "hard sell" of the for-profits and I (usually) don't like the politics/fee structure of the publics (though the price is right in-state).

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