Broadly speaking, accreditation is an effort to assess the quality of institutions, programs and services, measuring them against agreed-upon standards and thereby assuring that they meet those standards.

In the case of post-secondary education and training, there are two kinds of accreditation: institutional and programmatic (or specialized).

Institutional accreditation helps to assure potential students that a school is a sound institution and has met certain minimum standards in terms of administration, resources, faculty and facilities.   More detail...