Importance of Accreditation

All of us at MSB Online are looking forward to some exciting developments this spring. We will celebrate graduation with many of our undergraduate students and our first MBA graduates on June 21, 2007. We are also looking forward to our accreditation site visit May 30 through June 1, 2007.


Accrediting agencies are “private educational associations of regional or national scope which develop evaluation criteria and conduct peer evaluations to assess whether or not those criteria are met (U.S. Department of Education, 2007)”. The goal of accreditation is to ensure that education provided by institutions of higher education meet acceptable levels of quality. “Accreditation” is a formal review of the quality of higher education institutions and programs. In the United States, accreditation is an important tool in communicating to students, families, government officials, and the press that an institution or program provides a quality education (CHEA, 2006).

Our accrediting body, The Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS) will send a team of peer evaluators to review our institution during the site visit. The team will be visiting virtual classrooms and may be contacting students and faculty to learn about their experiences in the school. These visits occur every three to ten years for each of our locations. This peer evaluation is a valuable learning experience for us and we are looking forward to using the insights we gain in our work toward continuous improvement as an institution of higher learning. “The site visit is a great opportunity to show an institution’s strengths and aspirations to others and to benefit from the site visit team’s collective expertise (CHEA, 2007).”

Please feel free to contact a member of the education department if you have questions about the peer review process or accreditation in general. For additional information regarding higher education accreditation, see:

Commission on Higher Education Accreditation: Informing the Public About Accreditation. (2006). http://www.chea.org/public_info/index.asp

Financial Aid for Post-Secondary Students – Accreditation in the United States. (2007). http://www.ed.gov/admins/finaid/accred/index.html

Ann Mickelson
Online Dean of Students