Business schools, vocational schools, correspondence schools, online schools. With so many educational options available to students of all ages, it’s important to know how to tell if a school is legitimate.
Your BBB offers these tips:
- See if the school is accredited and by whom. Check to see if the accrediting agency is officially sanctioned. Lists are available from several accrediting organizations.
- Check with licensing boards and professional associations to see if the program delivers an acceptable level of training.
- Contact your BBB and the attorney general's office to make sure the school is operating legally in a state and to see if anyone has filed a complaint.
- Find out if the school is connected to an established, reputable parent company.
- If you intend to transfer credits to another college or university, check with that institution to see if they will accept them.
- Ask about the faculty: Who teaches the courses? What degrees do they have? What is their area of expertise?
Red flags to look out for include:
- Names similar to well-known colleges or universities.
- Frequent address changes, sometimes moving from state to state.
- Written materials with spelling and grammatical errors, sometimes on the diploma itself.
- Degrees can be earned in far less time than normal or the diploma is printed with a specific backdate.
- No selectivity in admissions, and no questions about previous test scores or detailed academic history.
- No interaction with professors or faculty
- Degree requirements are vague or unspecified, lacking class descriptions and without any mention of how many credit hours are required to complete a program.
- Tuition and fees are typically on a per-degree basis.
- Grade point average can be specified at time of purchase.