You may not think so, but education is an industry. As in any industry, there are organizations that are established and recognized, and those that are not. The main indicator of the quality of a school, or the validity of the programs and degrees it offers, is whether or not the school is accredited. The article below details accreditation in the US and in Canada, and how you can tell whether a school is or is not accredited.
According to the Department of State, in the US, accreditation is voluntary, so an institution can choose whether it wishes to be regionally or nationally accredited – or not accredited at all. (In some states, I could put a box on a street corner, call it a university, and hand out degrees.) Students at institutions that do not hold some form of recognized regional or national accreditation are likely to encounter problems in obtaining scholarships, transferring credits, having their credentials recognized by employers, etc.
The Secretary of Education is legally required to publish a list of nationally recognized accrediting agencies that the Secretary has determined to be able to evaluate and accredit schools and training programs. The Council for Higher Education (CHEA) oversees legitimate accrediting agencies. They have a database of almost 6,500 institutions, which are accredited by the CHEA or recognized by the Department of Education.
What's the difference between regional and national accreditation? According the Department of State, "Some institutions hold national rather than regional accreditation because they are unwilling or unable to meet the standards of regional accreditation."
Meanwhile, the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC) accredits distance education programs and institutions. But while it has accredited more than 70 institutions that sponsor home study programs of all types, credits and degrees earned at DETC colleges are not yet widely accepted in transfer by regionally accredited colleges.
Canada
There is no official organization with the mandate to accredit universities and colleges. Membership in the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) is used by some Canadian universities to determine their credibility. Overall, an alternative to the US style of accreditation is statutory authority, with provincial governments permitting use of the title "university." Ontario is a good example: look at the pile of universities created by the government in the late-1950s to mid-1960s (e.g., York University, Lakehead University, Trent University) as Canada came of age. Or look at the recent example of the evolution of the status of Ryerson University (2001), formerly Ryerson Polytechnic University (1993), formerly Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (1964, but 1971 was the first year it was granted the right to confer undergraduate degrees), formerly the Ryerson Institute of Technology (founded 1948).
How can you tell what's accredited?
A lot of real schools have famous names – you've heard of them, even if you don't know exactly where they are – such as Harvard, Columbia, McGill, Cambridge, Dalhousie, or Oxford.
Check the website of the school. Not all non-accredited schools are necessarily bad. But the problems of transferability of credits, recognition of degree, etc., remain.
Some non-accredited schools, though, are little more than diploma mills. (See Dear Cindy – Diploma Mills.) I have checked out several non-accredited schools, and they have similar characteristics, most of which are quite easily found on their homepage, in their About Us section, and/or in their FAQ section. These characteristics include:
• Scorning accreditation as some form of government, big business, big academia, or other monster conspiracy worthy of the X-Files.
• Going on in a near-paranoid vitriol about not wanting to be controlled by the government.
• Writing about being incorporated in a place other than where it is located due to tax or governmental control reasons.
• Making it appear that reading books and journals, writing papers, and writing exams are beneath you, are for suckers, or are simply ridiculous notions.
• Offering degrees in unexpected fields (e.g., a PhD in Martial Arts).
These are clear signs that the place is not accredited. Also, Americans and Canadians can look up schools on places such as Yahoo! Education.
In Summary
It's up to you to decide whether you want to spend (waste) your money and effort on a program that may get you nothing more than a pretty diploma. I'd say, don't. It's not worth the embarrassment of being told, no matter how politely, by a potential employer that your degree is worthless. Nor is it worth the disappointment that you could experience if you want to go on to further studies (e.g., a Master's degree following a Bachelor's degree) and are told that you have to go back to the beginning because your degree is worthless.