Institutional vs. Program Accreditation

It is important to distinguish between university accreditation and program accreditation. Accreditation of universities (such as accreditation by regional accreditation organizations in the United States, or recognition of universities by governments) are outside the scope of the Accreditation.org portal.

Here we deal with program accreditation, a credential that is given to an academic program leading to a specific degree, such as the accreditation of the Civil Engineering undergraduate program at the University of Colorado Boulder.  Note that the accreditation of an individual program does not imply the accreditation of the department within which the program resides. The Civil Engineering undergraduate program at the University of Colorado Boulder resides within the Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering Department which has other undergraduate and graduate programs.

It is also possible for a university to be institutionally accredited, but for only a few engineering or computing degrees within the university to be accredited at the program level.  Further, as accreditation of a program can take several years to complete, a program may be in the process of being accredited, or have achieved provisional accreditation, but not yet be fully accredited.  We only include fully accredited programs on Accreditation.org.