Saint James College's Accreditation Information: Two caveats: We are accredited by the Association of Accredited Bible Schools. We strictly adhere to our mission of providing world-class education in a conveniently-presented distance learning format. Our courses are academically sound, our faculty and instructors are highly-competent and helpful, and we strive to offer among the lowest tuition rates in North America. Because we are a relatively new college, we are not yet regionally accredited. This is less and less important in today’s job market where employers are hungry for qualified employees and have fewer concerns about regional accreditation than in the past. An accredited college or university is one providing the necessary resources to achieve its goals and purposes as per its Mission Statement through its academic offerings, is currently doing so, and which appears reasonably likely to continue to do so in the foreseeable future. Our actual accreditation and accreditation in general is not unique only to certain courses or programs but pertains to the college as an entire entity. Thus, it does not warrant every course or program offered. Nor does it guarantee the competence of individual graduates. Nevertheless, it provides an indicator of the quality of educational opportunities offered by our institution. Our mission and daily goal is to be the best small online college in America. Our degrees are not regionally accredited by an agency accepted by the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, but they are real degrees, legitimate, and awarded by a college that is sponsored by a fully-chartered parent, The Love Church Worldwide inter-faith denomination. Still, it is not the intent of our degree programs to prepare or authorize graduates to go on to achieve state licensising using our degree as the qualifiers. Our programs are solely designed to provide additional professional skills, to validate previous real-life and college learning, and to provide world-class, valuable, university-level degrees that will stand alone, and also to bring prestige to those to who earn them and, possibly, assist in obtaining career advancement. As many as 99% of non-traditional education students surveyed by a government-sponsored study said that they feel their degree meets or exceeds a traditional degree. The study showed that roughly one-fifth of those who were awarded a non-traditional under-graduate degree went on to obtain a masters or doctorate. 97% of the non-traditional undergrads were accepted by the grad school that they preferred. Three percent reported some difficulties in presenting a non-accredited degree or transcripts from a non-accredited college, or for having obtained real-life experience credits. The bottom line is that the study showed that a full 94 percent reported no difficulty in being admitted to graduate school due to having an unaccredited degree or earning it through non-traditional or online education. (See Sosdian, Carol P. and Sharp, Laure M., The External Degree as a Credential: Graduates’ Experience in Employment and Further Study, Washington, D.C., U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare.) The second caveat is that Saint James College degrees must have a "spiritual flavor" to them. Due to being owned by a chartered religious denomination, the government requires that our degrees be awarded with a relationship to a church or spiritual competency. You may sign your name with your credentials, such as Kathy Smith, M.S.W., or Larry Jones, MBA, but the government requires that your actual Saint James College diploma must say "Masters of Social Work in Spiritual Counseling" or, perhaps, "Masters of Business Administration in Spiritual Program Managment." Because our degrees were designed at the outset to assist priests, ministers, and spiritual workers to increase their competencies and advance their careers, this has been consistent with our mission. It also enables us to offer Masters and other degrees for as much as 95% below the "market" cost in traditional education. Nonetheless, this requirement may not be acceptable to all students. Consider all higher educational degree programs carefully and choose one that matches both your budget and also your professional needs.

MORE ACCREDITATION INFORMATION AND DISCUSSION: Accreditation has traditionally been a "private club" subscribed to by large, established, "old-line" American colleges and universities. It was a good thing because it established nationally-accepted standards for course effectiveness and faculty academic prepration. Members of regional accreditation agencies accepted credits from students requesting transfer from one college or university in the system to another. Then, along came the internet. It is possible for online schools to obtain regional accreditation, however it is a wearisome project, often taking two years or more to accomplish. It is also incredibly expensive for the school applying for such accreditation. And, the accrediting agencies generally require "site visits" to the campuses of applying colleges, and require that there be an established library for all books that students will read in the course of their studies. Only, online colleges don't have campuses or bricks-and-mortar for the "accrediting visitors" to inspect. As absolutely useful as regional accreditation has been, there many in academia who feel that it is a system whose time has past. We at Saint James College do not hold that view. We believe that there remain a number of good reasons for regional accreditation to continue. Nationally-accepted standards are a good thing. And, students wishing to transfer credits from one college or university to another, at least in the short term, may do well to obtain their degrees from regionally accredited institutions. (These schools tend to have ".edu") on their websites.) However, there are alternative accrediting agencies and programs emerging that in many cases provide a better fit for those colleges and univestities that offer online education. Saint James College is such a school. We subscribe to and have been accepted by A.A.B.S., with details provided below. It is not as "powerful" an accreditation as the "regionals" but, nonetheless, we adhere to the highest possible standards of academic excellence that are possile, we believe, for a worldwide online, adult-education, distance-learning college. (Accredited colleges of our type tend to have ".org" on the url's of ourwebsites.) Our degrees are completely legitimate and we, through our parent organization, The Love Church Worldwide, have a state charter to which we strictly adhere. But, the credit hours of even fully-chartered colleges such as ours may not always be automatically accepted for transfer by the regionally accredited schools. Before attending any college, be sure to determine whether or not a legitimate degree from a college without regional accreditation will suffice for you. One way to do this is to determine whether or not you will at some point wish to apply for state licensing and whether or not your state will accept an MSW from an non-regionally accredited college. Also, while other non-regionally accredited colleges and universities may accept your degree, many regionally accredited schools may decline to transfer your credit when you wish to sign up for their programs. Ask these questions and enroll in a non-regionally accredited school only when you are certain that their MSW will be useful to you.

EXAMPLES OF WHEN NON-ACCREDITED DEGREES MAY BE USEFUL:

If you are a social worker in an institution that does not seek Medicare or private insurance company "third party" reimbursement, an MSW without a license may be perfectly adequate. Or, if you are a supervisor and need an MSW for advancement but are not doing clinical supervision (not signing off on other social workers' cases), a non-accredited MSW may be fine. Other examples would be if you are a grant writer or, in some situations, a teacher.

We recommend that the decision to send any college tuition monies be carefully thought out. Talk to prospective employers and, of course, if you wish, you may confer with our student advisors, faculty, or administration. Our administrative offices are at: 863-441-3000.