{"id":736,"date":"2007-06-22T11:06:53","date_gmt":"2007-06-22T15:06:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=736"},"modified":"2007-06-22T14:54:50","modified_gmt":"2007-06-22T18:54:50","slug":"degree-granting-vs-accreditation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=736","title":{"rendered":"Degree Granting vs. Accreditation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Vermont&#8217;s Center for Cartoon Studies recently <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cartoonstudies.org\/media\/mfa.html\" target=\"_blank\">announced<\/a> that it will now be offering MFA degrees&#8211;a achievement for which I congratulate them heartily.  Much of the <a href=\"http:\/\/tcj.com\/journalista\/?p=385\" target=\"_blank\">reporting<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.comicsreporter.com\/index.php\/friday_news_follow_up_story_mania\/\">on<\/a> the event, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tcj.com\/messboard\/viewtopic.php?t=2191\" target=\"_blank\">discussion<\/a> thereof, though, has conflated two separate but related concepts: degree granting, and accreditation.   I myself made the same mistake when I first heard this news a while back from someone at the school, so for the sake of clarification, here&#8217;s the deal:<\/p>\n<p>The school has been granted &#8220;approval from the State of Vermont Department of Education Board to award Master of Fine Arts (MFA) Degrees.&#8221;  This means that they can confer MFA <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Academic_degree\" target=\"_blank\">degrees<\/a>&#8211;this is something that is granted by the state.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Educational_accreditation\" target=\"_blank\">Accreditation<\/a> is something else.  Accreditation in the U.S. is granted by a private organization, usually <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Council_for_Higher_Education_Accreditation\" target=\"_blank\">The Council for Higher Education Accreditation<\/a>&#8211;although, in the case of CCS it would likely be <a href=\"http:\/\/nasad.arts-accredit.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">The National Association of Schools of Art and Design<\/a> (NASAD).  This accreditation is not the granting of a legal status by any government institution; however being accredited is sometimes a requirement for getting grants and can affects transfer credits between schools, etc.  While most degree-granting schools are also accredited, it&#8217;s not unusual for a new institution, or one whose curriculum doesn&#8217;t fit nicely into previously established standards, to be degree-granting but not accredited&#8211;certainly CCS fits into both categories.<\/p>\n<p>Confusion-aside, congrats!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vermont&#8217;s Center for Cartoon Studies recently announced that it will now be offering MFA degrees&#8211;a achievement for which I congratulate them heartily. Much of the reporting on the event, and discussion thereof, though, has conflated two separate but related concepts: degree granting, and accreditation. I myself made the same mistake when I first heard this &hellip; <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link btn\" href=\"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=736\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[45,11],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p46veT-bS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}