CONCORDE CAREER INSTITUTE; nationally accredited ACCSC

[seriouslyserious, LPN]

after reading... i still am unsure what exactly approved vs. accreditation is. once i finish this program at Concorde Career institute... will i able able to travel to another state to further my education? BSN, MSN, etc...? also, is this program only recognized in Florida.

[yisy4u]

I really don't know about their accreditation, but I wouldn't recommend that school at all. I went there a few months ago and I almost applied for their Nursing program, but their credits cannot be transfered to any other school, so If you want to go for a Bachelor later you will have to do everything all over again. Besides, I also read all the reviews for that school and there's where I completely changed my mind. No way I was going to go to that school EVER. Everybody posted horrible things about Concorde, so I decided to go the traditional way in my Community college, which is also a lot cheaper that Concorde career Inst. I'll be doing my AS in 3 semesters and then I will apply to the Nursing program which is one of the best in Florida. So give it a thought, sometimes is better to go the long way and not to be stuck afterwards. Good luck and Merry Christmas. :)

[elkpark]

"Approved" by the state BON means that the school meets the minimum requirements established by the BON for graduates to be eligible to write the NCLEX and get licensed. "Accreditation" means that the school has voluntarily met a higher level of standards established by an independent professional organization. When you talk about nursing programs, there are two different kinds of accreditation to consider.

The first is general academic accreditation. The ACCSC (American Council on Career Schools and Colleges, I believe) is one of the accrediting bodies the proprietary (for-profit) tech/voc schools created that only accredit proprietary tech/voc schools, so that they can tell potential students they're "accredited" and be telling the truth (and most of their potential students don't know enough to ask any further questions, which is what they're counting on ). Because this is not one of the organizations that accredits "regular" colleges and universities, and the proprietary tech/voc schools don't have to meet the same academic and professional standards that "regular" colleges and universities do, it's unlikely that any credits from Concorde would be accepted by any "regular" colleges or universities if/when you wanted to further your education -- you would pretty much have to start over from scratch.

The second kind of accreditation to consider is nursing accreditation (the NLNAC and CCNE are the two nursing organizations that accredit nursing schools -- accreditation by either organization is equally good). Concorde is does not have nursing accreditation, and graduating from a program without nursing accreditation can create problems for you throughout your career. Although you would be able to get licensed and shouldn't have any problems endorsing your license to other states if you wished, many (most?) programs for continuing education in nursing (BSN completion programs and graduate programs) will only accept graduates of accredited programs, and a growing number of healthcare employers (including, I believe, the US military and the VA system, although I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong about that) will only hire graduates of accredited programs -- not all employers, certainly; not even most, but why close off any future career opportunities for yourself this early in the process?

Concorde will not explain any of this to you, because they are mostly interested in getting you to sign up and pay them a lot of money -- a lot more money than a nursing program in a public community college would cost, and you'd probably get a better nursing education at the CC (and courses from a community college will transfer to other schools, and the program probably has NLNAC accreditation). IMO, there's no good justification or rationale for paying a lot of tuition for courses that can't be transferred freely into other schools, or a program that doesn't have nursing accreditation.

Best wishes for your journey!

[Yadi84]

from what I know the credits you earn there are not accepted in other schools, are you planning on going beyond the license like a bachelors ect? If so you will have to look for a diff school.

[SVN1]

Concorde's LVN program is accepted at Community Colleges if you want to go LVN bridge to RN route. Yes, they don't give you credits for an associates, however, you can bridge into the RN program as a second year student. You will have to make up the credits later, but at least you won't have to wait 1-2 years just to get into an RN program. Bridging into the second year is much quicker than waiting to get accepted into the RN program.

[m2736185]

There are a few RN-BSN scools out there that will accept concorde credits, but these are all for-profit schools...tuition will be another 50k.

[CDub72]

Hello everyone,

From what I understand you have to make sure that the school itself is accredited. In the state of Florida it is only required that nursing programs are "approved"- this means that if you plan to be a nurse in the state of Florida you should be fine as far as employment goes. However if you were to ever seek employment in another state you may have difficulty. This is why it is recommended that you attend nursing programs that are "accredited" in order to be able to work wherever you wish without so much difficulty. I haven't heard much about Concorde Institute, but I always like to google and find reviews from others who have attended the school-