Getting Your Accredited Online Biology Degree – Why Is it Important

Is an Online Biology Degree Credible?

So you ask…what is so important about getting an accredited online biology degree? You wonder if online degrees are a joke.

Well…I know you probably aren’t going to be an English major, but before you embark on your biology degree let me throw a couple of words at you. “Accredited”. “Credible”.

Now let me give you the antonym for these words (a reminder for non-English majors – an antonym is a word with the opposite meaning of another)… “not approved”. “Junk”.

Why are you getting an English lesson when you really want to study biology? Well, one of the very first things you need to know is whether you are getting a quality education in biology.

Quiz #1 – What is Accreditation?
The United States government does not have a single entity to oversee the quality of educational institutions. Since there are numerous diploma mills (schools that take tuition for a degree and do not provide a quality education), it is in the best interest of upstanding colleges and universities to prove that they offer quality educations. Therefore the academic industry has established a process whereby schools can ensure that they are offering quality programs. That process is called accreditation.

Accreditation is given to schools that meet a certain set of quality standards established by an accrediting agency. Accreditation agencies check the standards either by school or by program. In order to ensure that you are getting an accredited online biology degree your school must have applied to an accrediting agency and passed all of its requirements. If you school is accredited, it will readily share its accreditation credentials with you. If it is not, you might have a difficult time finding any information on the institution’s credibility.

Jumping the Lily Pads – the Accredited Lily Pads That Is
While some of you reading this article are going to get your biology degree and say goodbye to formal education, many of you will be using your degree as a launching pad to the next level of education. After all, an accredited online biology degree is merely the first step on the ladder that leads to one of two areas:

· A Professional Program – for example, medicine, nursing, veterinary science, forestry

· An Academic Path – from teaching high school on up to a university teaching position

So what’s the point? For each step of your path, the institutions that you go to will need to ensure that your prior education meets certain quality standards. The way that they know that is by ensuring that your degree is from an accredited institution. For example, you will need to get a master’s degree from an accredited institution in order to (a) get a doctorate in a professional program or (b) follow an academic career path at an accredited institution. And, in order to get a master’s degree from an accredited institution you will need to get a bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution.

Final Exam – The Bill
If you fall into the majority as a college student you will need to get some kind of financial assistance to pay for your education. Four, six, or eight years of biology-related classes can sure add up. In the same way that your chosen educational institution required proof that your education was of high quality, any organization that will give you money for your education will require the same type of proof. That proof comes in the form of accreditation. When you apply for financial aid, whether from the federal or state government, or from a scholarship committee (or even for some bank loans), you will need to prove that you are going to spend that tuition money on biology classes at an accredited institution.

So my advice to you is to do a little homework before your freshman classes begin. Make sure that the institution that you go to is going to give you an accredited online biology degree.

Before settling on an accredited online biology degree program did you consider a school that was not accredited?

Share the differences you noticed.