Are Nationally Accredited Online Degrees Reputable?

If you are going to register for an online degree you have to make sure that you pay attention to the accreditation of the school offering the degree. The best by far is a school that is regionally accredited, this is the gold standard and any school that is regionally accredited can be considered a legitimate school. There are however quite a few schools that do not meet this requirement and that does not necessarily mean that they are bad, in fact many of them have national accreditation.

Nationally accredited online colleges are not as desirable as ones that are regionally accredited that is the simple reality. This does not however mean that NA schools are not legitimate. They do have to meet a certain standard and schools that meet this standard are generally considered to be legitimate, at least in the sense that they are not diploma mills.

There are however some downsides to attending a school that is nationally accredited rather than regionally accredited and you need to be aware of these. The biggest is that you will likely find that if you want to transfer to another school down the road that it will be very hard to transfer your credits. Schools that are regionally accredited rarely accept transfer credits from schools that are not. In addition you will also likely find it hard to get into a grad school that is RA if your undergraduate degree is from an NA school.

As a general rule even though nationally accredited schools are legitimate institutions they should be avoided. There are just too many negatives to attending one. Given that there are thousands of regionally accredited online colleges there is really no reason to attend one that is not.

When you are looking at any online school the first place that you should go in your research is to the accreditation, this should be listed on their website, if it is not easy to find it is probably best to just move onto your next option. Schools that have the proper accreditation will make this known.

So, are nationally accredited schools legitimate? The answer is that yes they are, however they are not really a good option for getting an online degree. There is nothing they can offer that a school that is RA can't offer without the disadvantages.