Just a question here really, I am under the impression that a school can be accredited regionally for most all courses but computer related classes are acredited by a seperate orginazation. can anyone confirm/deny/elaborate. on this?? Nathan S
I thought that if a college has RA accreditation all their degrees are accredited, is it not correct ? Does it mean that those Colleges that dont have this kind of accreditation are not allowed to give Computer degrees ? what about Excelsior BSCIS and TESC Computer degrees ? are those degrees accredited ?
ABET, as far as my undertsanding is concerned, is a Professional Accreditation body for the Engineering/Technology Profession. Your ABET/CSAB accredited degree makes you eligible to pursue the Professional Engineer (PE) license in the US. This degree also gives you an edge when you happen to work and need to practice your profession in one of the "Washington Accord" signatory countries. Washington Accord Regards,
Regional accreditation covers all courses/programs/degrees at an institution. There are also specialized accreditions, which some schools may seek in addition to regional accreditation, but in the IT field I am not aware of any that have significant value to the student.
There are a lot of computer related degrees such as CIS and IS and from I can survey most of them do not have a professional accreditation status. They are typically RA. Under ABET, through the Computer Accrediting Commission for Computer Science and information system degrees. http://www.abet.org/accreditation.html You can check to see which schools have this accreditation at: http://www.abet.org/accredited_programs/computing/CACWebsite.asp These accreditations are at the BS level and just as there are many schools that have this accreditation there are many other that do not. Prominent schools such as Carnegie Mellon, UNC - Chapel Hill, and Duke University are examples that do not have this accreditation for their computer programs. I do not yet see the computer accreditations as important in the IT field as ABET is to the engineering field. John
The accreditation is only important for CS in things like the patent bar. Many of the top 10 schools didn't bother with the accreditation until the patent bar started allowing CS degree for a qualification to sit for the patent exam. However, the patent office requires the degree to be accredited for automatic qualification to sit. Now that they've added that as a possible route to a patent agent/attorney, there's been many, many more programs getting accreditation.
