Verifying Defunct Accredited Schools

I am working with my company's HR department to define hiring/credential verification procedures. I have just read the book 'Bear's Guide to Earning Degrees by Distance Learning'. It seems to have caused some concerns about accreditation and verification. My question is what to do about a school that was (claimed) to have been accredited and no longer exists? Is that a problem? How do you verify graduation/transcripts? Are there many schools that have gone out of business? Does anyone list them? What about a school that has lost it's accreditation? Does that happen often and does anyone list them?

 

Schools go out of business all the time.

To check on a school's former status, you can check with the regional accrediting association where that school was located.

You can also check with the higher education authorities in the state where the school was located.

You can also check with other schools in the subject school's location.

You can check reference books, especially those that were published while the school in question was still operating.

(This is hardly an exhaustive list, but it might be a start.)

 

To research a school which has closed or changed name, start with the state it used to be in. Every state has a Department of Education or Board of Regents, and most states have a department that regulates the private postsecondary schools. One of these offices will have access to old records, including accreditation history and (sometimes) contact info for a custodian of records.

 

We try, in the "Miscellaneous Schools" chapter of Bears' Guide, to list every nontraditional (and this includes all of the unaccredited ones) school that we know about. If a given school is not there, you could certainly ask in this forum. Rich and I both have an awful lot of information (and memories) on the unaccredited world, going back to the early 1970s.

 

Accredited and Defunct

I am concerned about schools that have been accredited and go out of business. I appreciate the comments in Bears' Guide about the accreditation system and its value to the employment process. Does anyone know if accrediting agencies keep track of those defunct schools? We are trying to simplify the list of accredited schools, in or out of business.

We are struggling with accepting credentials from defunct schools, especially those degrees exclusively through distance learning. I think that it somehow cheatens the value of the education.

 

Here's a list of some of the closed schools: http://www.closedcollege.bizland.com/List_of_Schools.htm

 

Re: Accredited and Defunct

I don't get this. What does one (being defunct) have to do with the other ("exclusively through distance learning")? How does this "cheaten" the value of education?

Perhaps a way out of this spiraling non sequitur is to ask about specific schools.

 

closedcollege

OK, so http://www.closedcollege.bizland.com is a legitimate organization, while http://www.closedcollege.com is a diploma mill?

 

Looks like it.

 

I dont' know if this helps or not, but here goes...my wife graduated from a state licensed and nationally accredited vocational technical school back in the late 1980's. This school eventually closed. We recently moved and had to get official copies of her transcript. we discovered that the group licensing vocational technical schools in the state maintained all of the trancripts in boxes and they were able to locate her transcripts and to forward them to the licensure board in our new state. In talking with the higher education officials they indicated that they had a similar practice for universities and colleges with the board of regents. I don't know if this would be true in every state, but it might be a good start.

 

Re: Accredited and Defunct

If the school is out of business and the records of the student can be validated then there shouldn't be a problem. Also, why the focus on distance learning degrees? Is this a big problem?


John