Maybe, sort of. The British Department for Education and Skills (DfES) places non-degree vocational postsecondary schools accredited by the British Accreditation Council on the register of post-secondary education providers that the British immigration authorities use to determine whether foreign students qualify for student visas. (Some of the phony schools in Britain were operating as immigration rackets.) Note that the DfES doesn't vouch for the quality of the schools, just that they aren't totally fake. http://www.dfes.gov.uk/providersregister/faq.cfm The British institutions that are authorized to award higher education degrees (recognized bodies), or to provide instruction leading to the award of another institution's degrees (listed bodies) a peculiarly British concept, are listed on a separate Department for Education and Skills directory. The Department emphasizes that if an allegedly British degree program isn't on these lists, then it isn't a recognized British degree provider. http://www.dfes.gov.uk/recognisedukdegrees/ In the case of British degree programs, the accrediting body is the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education. This organization performs higher education site visits, writes up reports, pressures schools to address weaknesses and so on. http://www.qaa.ac.uk Unfortunately, things get a lot murkier than that. The British Accreditation Council doesn't just stop at accrediting further education, it accredits schools that offer higher education degrees as well. For example, there's the London Academy of Higher Education that offers undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. It claims some kind of relationship with the legitimate University of Sunderland, but doesn't appear on the DfES list of recognized or listed providers. It isn't clear to me whose degrees the LAHE is awarding or where its degree granting powers come from. http://www.lahe.org.uk/about.php Here's something that calls itself the International Management Centres Association that offers what it rather slyly calls "degrees of membership" from the bachelors to the doctoral level. The degrees are of doubtful provenance and the association doesn't appear on the DfES' list of recognized or listed providers. IMCA may be the latest version of the old Revans University "action learning" thing. Revans was once accredited by America's DETC, but that accreditation was terminated. See this thread. http://www.imcassociation.edu/imcassociation/ The BAC calls itself the leading accreditor of "independent" higher education institutions in Britain, which may suggest that it's hoping to find a new niche accrediting the better of those totally unregulated "foreign "universities" with British addresses but offshore business licenses that increasingly infest the United Kingdom. The BAC says: http://www.the-bac.org/indep1.htm How credible that is, or how much recognition it will receive in the UK and abroad, seems questionable to me. If the BAC is accrediting "overseas awards", then the credibility and standing of those ostensibly foreign degrees would probably be more a function of the awards' standing (if any) in their theoretical country of origin than of the BAC's accreditation. It's very unlikly that BAC accreditation of a British-based degree-granting "independent college" operating with an offshore business license would be accepted by the academic and professional communities as the equivalent of being a DfES recognized/listed institution and falling under the oversight of the QAA. Caution is probably prudent.
Thanks Bill. I appreciate your insight into UK based educational system. I have a few options to study courses from small time colleges like 360 GSP where the tuition fee is less and are accredited by BAC. http://www.360gsp.com/ is the link. My outlook is for a good MBA that allows me to improve my earnings by around 50%. I know there are some good accredited UK based universities that offer MBA for less than 7000 pounds. But cant seem to find them. How is Liverpool Hope university in terms of placement? Also do you know good universities that offer MBA's with internships that costs around 10000 pounds or lesser. Thanks in advance.
Post graduate diploma in Management Through London college of Advanced studies Which they claim is Dfes accredited as well as BAC accredited. I am just wondering if the campus based program is going to be fruitful. I would go on to extend the same to an MBA after the course completion in any of the UK universities. Just wondering if the accreditation is industry recognized. Also I have got an option of self-sponsoring a pricy MBA from Middlesex university but I wish to explore both the options as the PGDBA enroute to MBA offers lesser in terms of tuition fee and more over I would get to have a hang of Management courses before hand rather than finding the MBA program difficult. Thank you so much for all your valueble inputs!
