Accreditation???

Nursing Students General Students

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Hey guys, I recently visited a nursing school that I fell in love with. However, when I asked them about their accreditation for their nursing program they told me they were only accredited by Middle States (MSCHE). They told me that I would still be able to pursue a masters in nursing at other nursing schools in the US if I so desired. However, upon looking on the internet I realized that Middle States might only be regional accreditation and not national.

Im quite confused about the matter and would really appreciate it if someone could explain if I would be able to pursue an MSN or DNP if I did my BSN somewhere with only MSCHE accreditation.

Thansk!

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Specializes in NICU, ICU, PICU, Academia.

Regional accreditation (counterintuitively) is the gold standard. National accreditation is usually programmatic.

For example, schools in the Big Ten are regionally accredited by the Middle States or other regional accreditor such as SACS. The nursing program at Purdue would hold CCNE ('national) accreditation for its nursing program.

There are multiple threads about this here on AN. Use the feature in the upper right hand corner of the page to find them. Also, Wikipedia has a fairly instructive article about accreditation.

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Okay, thank you! I will do that. I came upon a link that said that all national accreditations were good, whereas if it was regionally it depended/ some masters programs would turn you away. I'll definitely look into it a bit more.

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Specializes in orthopedic/trauma, Informatics, diabetes.

is this an initial licensure or a bridge (RN-BSN)?

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Part of the confusion is that there are two different kinds of accreditation you need to consider. One is the general academic accreditation of the school, which applies to the entire school and has nothing to do specifically with nursing. In the case of general academic accreditation, regional accreditation is the "gold standard," as meanmary noted. MSCHE is one of the regional accrediting organizations that accredits "regular" (for lack of a better word) colleges and universities. The proprietary tech-voc schools, many of which offer nursing programs, are usually accredited by organizations that have been created and funded by the proprietary tech-voc schools, and those organizations are national organizations that offer national accreditation. That accreditation is basically meaningless (it exists so the schools can truthfully tell prospective students that they are "accredited" and hope that the prospective students won't know enough to ask further about it). Credits from schools with national general academic accreditation generally aren't able to be transferred to "regular" colleges and universities; because the tech-voc schools are held to lower academic standards than the schools that have regional (general academic) accreditation, the credits aren't equivalent to courses taken at schools with the higher level of accreditation, and they are usually worthless when you want to further your education later.

The nursing-specific accreditations, ACEN and CCNE, are both national accreditations, which is what makes this so confusing for newbies. National nursing accreditation is good; national academic accreditation is bad.

You want a school that has national nursing accreditation (ACEN or CCNE; there are some other health-related accreditations that, again, apply generally to the tech-voc schools, that mean nothing in nursing) and regional general academic accreditation.

Best wishes!

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Thank you! That was actually very helpful. I asked at the nursing school if I could apply to masters programs in the US and they assured me I could, but I was just looking at some masters programs I might be interested in applying to in the long run and it seems they all require ACEN or CCNE accreditation, which the nursing school I visited does not have. Quite a shame, since it seemed like it was a very good school.

It's also a relatively new nursing school (2-3 years I believe). Would that have anything to do with the fact that it isn't accredited by a national nursing organization? Their other programs they offer, medical school, psychology, etc, all have their respective accreditations, so it seems weird that they wouldn't try to get the same for their nursing program.

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Well, when they tell you you can apply, they are telling the truth -- of course you can apply, same as anyone else; doesn't mean you'll get accepted, though. Also, there are the for-profit "diploma mill" schools, including nursing graduate programs, that will take anyone who applies, regardless, so there probably would be a few graduate programs that would accept you (not necessarily schools you want to attend).

Did you ask the school whether they are applying (or have already applied) for ACEN or CCNE accreditation? The accreditation process takes a few years, so there's no such thing as a new program that has nursing accreditation. Every program starts out unaccredited. And is the school you "fell in love with" a for-profit or a not-for-profit school? Many of the for-profit schools will tell potential students whatever they want to hear in order to get them to enroll and start paying tuition.

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Im pretty sure its a for profit school. There's really only one non profit school near me and as you can imagine they are highly selective, so I thought id slook at my options. I guess when you put it that way they didnt technically lie, but idk, it is a bit deceiving to not tell a student about to enroll in over 20k of debt that there might be limitations. I'll definitely call them and see if they've applied for the accreditation, but since ill most likely be applying next cycle, if they dont have ot by then I dont think I'll take the risk. Thanks once again!

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