Recognition
British American University (BAU), Florida, USA, is a globally recognized Institution of Higher Education. The University was duly approved, registered and authenticated under the Law of Florida, USA, with Registration No. L18000118730, Authentication Code No. 918A00010050-051518-L18000118730-1/1 and the Employer’s Identification Number (EIN) is 35-2630004. The University has been approved in Nigeria as British American Intercontinental University. BAU is widely recognized in many countries by individuals, corporate organizations as well as State and Federal Governments’ agencies for the purpose of employment, admission into academic and professional programs of other Universities and Research Institutions. Click here for Registration and Recognition Documents
Accreditation
Accreditation is an incredibly important facet of Higher education. Most define accreditation as a status that shows that a Higher Institution has met and is maintaining a high level of standards set by an accrediting agency. However, accreditation is a voluntary evaluation process that institutions of higher education undergo in order to maintain standards of educational quality agreed upon by members of an accrediting body. Colleges and Universities are judged based on self-evaluations analyzing how well they meet these standards in the light of their missions. Accreditation seeks to assess and enhance the educational quality of an institution, ensure consistency in institutional operations, promote self-evaluation and institutional improvement, and provide for public accountability within a peer-review framework. Accreditation promotes institutional accountability by systematically and comprehensively evaluating institutions based upon criteria established via evaluation standard.
Accreditation assessments may include self-study on the part of the institution as well as evaluations by representatives of peer institutions who belong to the same accrediting agency. As a voluntary process, preparing an accreditation report can be labor-intensive. Most accreditors recommend that institutions start preparing their accreditation report about two years in advance of the due date. Despite the time commitment and the voluntary nature of the process, the vast majority of institutions choose to pursue and maintain their accreditation for two important reasons. Institutional accreditation is helpful when students want to transfer to another institution. Students from non-accredited institutions will generally have a harder time getting their transfer credits accepted at another institution especially those ones that are institutionally accredited. Many students now attend multiple institutions, either sequentially or concurrently, so the ease with which they can transfer their credits has become important.
For Universities that want to be accredited, though not mandatory, there are many regional, national and international accreditation agencies both in the USA and outside of the US. Many accreditation agencies accredit University programs; that is, Programs or Programmatic Accreditation for specialized programs such as medicine, Nursing, Agriculture, Pharmacy, Law, Accounting, Business, Engineering, Psychology, etc, while others accredit the University itself as a whole; that is, Institutional Accreditation in which case all programs of the University will be considered having been duly accredited. This means that Institutional accreditation applies to the entire University, specific programs, and distance education provided by the University.
Institutional Accreditation
For institutional accreditation, representatives from dedicated accrediting institutions evaluate Colleges and Universities. This is a means for Colleges and Universities to assess their own performance and compare themselves with other Higher Educational Institutions. If a school is awarded accreditation, it means that the institution meets certain standards of educational quality.
However, institutional accreditation is not necessarily a guarantee that credits will transfer between institutions, although it does make it far more likely. Students can check with the program to which they wish to transfer to see if credits will be accepted. Attending an accredited program carries numerous other benefits. Students at institutionally accredited organizations are eligible for federal financial aid, and employers are much more likely to recognize accredited degree programs. Furthermore, having undergone an accreditation process means that the institution meets a high standard of educational quality.
Institutional accreditation covers the institution as a whole, has quality standards that are usually broader and are rarely prescriptive in terms of specific ways in which an institution must show compliance, affects how easily students can transfer credit from institution to institution (a common example is a student who starts his or her post-secondary education at a community college, and later transfers to a three-year University), and it is managed by the institution’s Accreditation Liaison Officer, often the chief academic officer or head of institutional effectiveness
Programmatic Accreditation
Programmatic accreditation is generally administered by professionally-oriented specialty accrediting bodies. The idea is that professionals in a given field are best able to judge a program’s educational quality. In many cases, attending a program that is recognized by the right agency is a prerequisite for obtaining a job in fields such as accounting, Banking and finance, psychology, law, healthcare, and so on. Many programmatic accreditors such as the American Psychological Association (APA) require that accredited programs be housed in an institutionally accredited Institution. Programs may be offered that are judged by these specialty bodies, without necessarily possessing institutional accreditation.
For instance, continuing education programs within non-educational settings (such as hospitals) may be accredited by a specialized accreditation agency. Such courses may count professionally (towards professional certifications or state licenses) but will not transfer for University credit. Similarly, if a specialty body accredits a program at a University, but the University itself is not institutionally accredited, the program may have professional value, yet credits will not transfer and students may not be able to receive federal financial aid. Since professional requirements vary, it is crucial to find out what accreditation is necessary for a given career.
No matter what vocation a student chooses, it is wise for him/her to become familiar with the professional requirements in the field. Tools for investigating professional accreditation requirements include seeking out information from professional associations. These organizations are often either accrediting agencies themselves or can provide students with the appropriate information, and searching for student reviews of the educational quality at a given institution; may be a tip-off that a program lacks accreditation or is on its way to losing accreditation. With a little research into accreditation, students can be assured of taking the right steps towards a rewarding career.
Conclusively, programmatic accreditation is focused on one program (e.g., nursing), or a set of related programs (e.g., business, or engineering/applied sciences/technology), has quality standards that can be very specific (e.g., to the point of providing specific questions that must be asked of graduates in a survey), can affect how easily graduates can find work in their field, can affect whether graduates can take state licensure examinations in their field, can affect whether graduates of a program are admitted to graduate school for further study in their field, and is often managed by the department chair or Dean of the program in question.
Accreditation in USA
Colleges and Universities Accreditation in the US, as in many other countries, is a voluntary, self-regulatory, non-governmental, peer-review process which provides a means of assisting Colleges and Universities to become stronger and better institutions by setting standards of educational quality. It is coordinated by various non-governmental accreditation commissions (Agencies) made up of member institutions and not by any government agency.
Therefore, the US Department of Education (DOE) does not accredit Universities. Many accrediting agencies in the US voluntarily seek recognition from the Secretary of Education but they are not required by Law to do so. Consequently, Colleges and Universities accreditation in the US is optional, voluntary process, and each College or University may decide for itself if accreditation is appropriate and necessary to accomplish its mission. Not all Colleges and Universities in the US need accreditation from any external accrediting agency. In fact, many of them see external accreditation as an invasion into their privacies to undermine their legal, academic and/or professional rights and authorities! Accreditation in the US is only mandatory for Colleges and Universities that seek Federal Government educational funding. Many Universities operate as unaccredited institutions in the US, Europe, other parts of the world, and they award degree Certificates! The awardees will then go and evaluate or validate their degrees from organizations (Accreditation Agencies) set up for that purpose, and once that is done, the validated unaccredited degrees would be as good as the accredited ones!
BAU’s Accreditation Policy
As an Intercontinental University, the Policy of the British American University, Florida, on accreditation is dicephalous; that is, partly internal and partly external accreditations. Internally, BAU has constituted the University Accreditation Committee (UAC) that considers and accredits all programs of the University every four years apart from the usual initial accreditation prior to the commencement of every new program. The membership of the UAC is as follows:
