Benefits of World Accreditation

Accreditation is a voluntary method of quality assurance developed more than 100 years ago by American universities and secondary schools. Accreditation engages the entire learning community in a continuous process of self-evaluation, reflection, and improvement. It invites external scrutiny and welcomes the constructive feedback of peers. It demands rigor, is based in data, and approaches documentation of results with discipline. World Accreditation is about making the global quest for excellence a habit; it's about being the best a school can be on behalf of the students it serves.

In surveys conducted worldwide, schools report that the greatest benefits of accreditation are the external mark of quality, high standards, and school improvement process and support. Through the World Accreditation Commission, independent learning institutions across the world enjoy a range of benefits including:

• A distinctive mark of quality, recognized internationally, that affords external recognition of the learning insitution's commitment to quality.
• Standards based on research on factors that impact student learning.
• Proven, clear, and intuitive processes for teaching improvement that are grounded in best practices from the education and business fields.
• A framework and support system to help meet local, state, national, and appropriate international requirements. Professional development opportunities such as annual conferences and state workshops on all aspects of learning environment improvement.
• An opportunity to gain valuable input, validation, and support from peers.
• Connection to peer-recommended practices, best practices, and resources and tools across 154 countries
• Customized and technical assistance to maximize improvement efforts.
• Access to guides, handbooks, primers, resources, tools and Web sites aimed at enhancing improvement efforts.
• Transferability of credits to students from country to country.
• Greater accessibility for students to international funding, loans, scholarships, post secondary education, and travel programs that require accreditation.

Perhaps more importantly, students benefit from accreditation because, through the process, any learning institution carrying our approval has committed to raising student performance and will be held accountable for improving student learning on a continual basis.