Online Masters programs and National accreditation

[Kyle46N]

Hello all. I wanted to clarify with whoever may be knowledgeable on the subject. I am planning on applying for an online Masters program, probably nursing administration, health administration, etc. I'm in the military and will be using tuition assistance. Liberty as you may know is very friendly in this category. It seems they are a regional accreditation in many of their online programs, but if I'm not mistaken they are nationally accredited in their online nursing masters program through CCNE. I guess I'm asking if I'm seeing this correctly. Is this accurate? Are they nationally accredited in their nursing program? And also, is this a common thing with online universities? National accreditation in certain programs but regional in others? Thanks!

[Corey Narry, MSN, RN, NP]

Hi and welcome to allnurses. To answer your question, yes, that's common for all universities online or not. There are two types of voluntary accreditation seen at the college/university level:

Institutional Accreditation encompasses the entire educational institution as a whole and is awarded by any of the six regional accreditation agencies in the US depending on the location of the institution's physical campus. Find out which regional accreditation agency this school is accredited with, it should be one of these for it to be considered reputable.

Program Accreditation includes a number of program-specific national accreditation bodies that monitor the quality of specific program offerings such as those for the field of education, nursing, business, or medicine. For Nursing, there are two: CCNE and ACEN. They are both recognized across all institutions.

[Kyle46N]

That's perfect! Thanks a bunch for your reply.