Degrees of prestige p1 - Military - Education Strategies and Tips - Military Times EDGE

Imagine you’re wrapping up your bachelor’s degree, looking forward to the prospect of earning a commission. But after four long years of study, you discover that your degree program wasn’t sufficiently accredited — and you won’t qualify for that new MOS.

Thanks to the Post-9/11 GI Bill, more schools, both new and well-established, are making a point of trying to attract service members, both active duty and veterans. That means you have a lot of choices — and you have to be increasingly discerning to sort through them.

One well-known guidepost is institutional accreditation, an educational standard most students have become familiar with. But fewer people know that institutional accreditation may not be enough depending on your career field.

That’s where specialized, or professional, accreditation comes in.

Even if a college as a whole is properly accredited, its degree programs may not be recognized by the accrediting body for that field. And graduates of those programs will probably find it very difficult to get the license or certification they need to practice their profession.

It’s a horror story Kathleen Megivern hears too often. Students spend thousands of dollars and invest hundreds of hours earning a specialized degree, only to discover that their degree program is not accredited and they are not allowed to sit for a license or certification test.

“People literally are in tears,” said Megivern, vice chairwoman of the Association of Specialized and Professional Accreditors and executive director of the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs.

“[Specialized] accreditation technically is voluntary,” Megivern said. “But if a field is licensed, most deans will tell you there is nothing voluntary about it.”

What it is

Specialized accreditation recognizes programs that meet certain standards for quality and are striving for constant improvement, Megivern said.

Currently, 61 specialized accrediting organizations accredit more than 19,000 programs in the U.S., according to the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, a private, nonprofit organization responsible for coordinating accreditation activity in the U.S.

“We are interested in the quality of the program. It’s not the department or the school or the degree. It’s the program itself,” said Michael Milligan, executive director of ABET, an organization that accredits educational programs in applied science, computing, engineering and technology.

“In the technical world, what you do and the type of jobs that you do really affect basic safety in the world,” he said. “Take [a bridge-builder]. People who are hiring have to know that you have some basic capability. If you have gone to a nonaccredited program, they have no way of knowing that. A lot of this comes down to public safety.”

Students can be lulled into a false sense of security because their college or university has institutional accreditation, Milligan said. But the accreditation status of programs within a school has nothing to do with its regional or national accreditation as an institution: A school may have multiple engineering technology programs, for example, but they might not all be accredited.

Is it common for a reputable college, which has the proper institutional accreditation, to have unaccredited programs? Not very, Milligan said. However, he emphasized that specialized accreditation is a voluntary process, and some institutions do choose not to accredit some, or all, of their programs. They might not want to spend the money or ask faculty and administrators to prepare for an accreditation visit. Or it might be that a program is only a few years old, and the school has not yet applied for accreditation.

Who needs it

Specialized accreditation is most important for people entering a licensed field such as engineering, technology, health care, law and accounting. That’s a lot of people: University of Minnesota economist Morris Kleiner estimates in his book “Licensing Occupations: Ensuring Quality or Restricting Competition?” that 20 percent of U.S. workers in 2000 were in fields that had a state licensing requirement, up from just 5 percent in the 1950s.

Although laws vary from state to state, most states require that individuals seeking licensure in a variety of professions have graduated from an accredited program.

Graduating from an accredited program also eases the way if you’re hoping to pursue an advanced degree, Milligan said. Many graduate schools look at the specialized accreditation status of undergraduate programs.

“If students really want to be competitive, they really should come from an accredited program,” he said.

In certain areas, such as engineering, Milligan said, higher-education institutions have a long history of supporting accreditation, and, as a result, almost all engineering programs choose to be accredited. In addition, industry, state licensing boards and others — including the military — expect engineering programs to be ABET-accredited and will only hire or license graduates from ABET-accredited programs. If you want to be an engineer in the Navy Civil Engineer Corps, for example, you must have graduated from an ABET-accredited engineering program. Ditto for would-be Air Force civil engineers.

Engineering and technology fields are not the only ones for which the military requires specialized accreditation. Those seeking to be Army Dental Corps officers must be graduates of dental schools accredited by the American Dental Association, for example, according to GoArmy.com. And Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps attorneys must have earned their juris doctor or bachelor of laws degree from a law school accredited by the American Bar Association.

Government and civilian-sector jobs look closely at specialized accreditation as well. Most engineering jobs within the federal government require graduation from an ABET-accredited program, Milligan said, as evidenced by postings on usajobs.com.

Where to start

If you’re contemplating a particular course of study, Megivern recommends researching the certification or licensure requirements for that profession, then determining whether the academic program you’re interested in is accredited.

Information about a profession’s certification and licensing requirements can be found by contacting an appropriate professional association, or by contacting the government of the state where you hope to work. The agency or department handling licensure varies state by state. In Virginia, for example, it’s the Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation; in California, the information falls under the Department of Consumer Affairs.

Megivern urges students to be cautious when asking a school to provide information about the accreditation status of its programs. College admissions workers or other school representatives may not understand the difference between the different types of accreditation and could unknowingly give false information. Worse, unscrupulous schools could deliberately mislead students about the legitimacy of their programs.

Surviving the worst case

Finally, if you are enrolled in a nonaccredited program, all hope is not lost, the experts said.

There often are alternative pathways to sit for licensing and certification exams, Megivern said — but the road is longer and harder, often involving additional training or work experience under the direct supervision of an expert in the field, or additional evaluation of your education and experience.

Engineering licensure candidates, for example, must go through a $400 credentials evaluation to sit for licensure if they’ve graduated from a program not accredited by ABET.

To find information about alternative pathways to licensure or certification, contact the relevant government licensing body for the state in which you seek to obtain licensure and employment. You can also contact the appropriate CHEA-recognized specialized accrediting organization for your profession.

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License to work

Licensure requirements vary by career field and state. A few examples:

• Engineering: All 50 states and the District of Columbia require licensure for engineers who offer their services directly to the public. This licensure generally requires a degree from an ABET-accredited engineering program, four years of relevant work experience and completion of a state examination.

• Physical therapy: All states regulate the practice of physical therapy. Eligibility requirements vary by state, but typical requirements for physical therapists include: graduation from an accredited physical therapy education program, passing the National Physical Therapy Examination and fulfilling state requirements such as jurisprudence exams.

• Attorneys: To qualify for the bar examination in most states, an applicant must earn a college degree and graduate from a law school accredited by the American Bar Association or the proper state authorities. With certain exceptions, graduates of schools not approved by the ABA are restricted to taking the bar examination and practicing in the state or other jurisdiction in which the school is located; most of these schools are in California.

• K-12 teachers: Teacher education programs are accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education and the Teacher Education Accreditation Council. Graduation from an accredited program is not necessary to become a teacher, but it may make fulfilling licensure requirements easier.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics’ current Occupational Outlook Handbook

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On the Web

Information about the accreditation status of academic programs can be found:

• By searching databases maintained by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation or the Education Department.

• By contacting one of the 61 specialized accrediting organizations recognized by CHEA or the Education Department. ABET, for example, maintains a search engine of accredited programs.