How important is accreditation?

Question

How important is it for a computer science program to be accredited? Right now I'm looking at RPI and Northeastern for their computer science programs but can't find on their website whether its accredited or not. How important is accreditation by ABET??

Answer 1

They are almost certainly accredited; those are big-name schools.  But accreditation is necessary; without it, your degree isn't considered legitimate.

Answer 2

There are a couple of types of accreditation, so I somewhat disagree with eri on this one.  Accreditation by a regional accreditor is absolutely essential to the legitimacy of your degree, and both RPI and Northeastern are regionally accredited.  As eri said, without that, the degree is no good.  The other form of accreditation is one specific to a particular discipline, such as ABET.  The lack of ABET accreditation, which is much harder to get, will not affect the legitimacy of your degree or your ability to get jobs, but it would probably limit the transferability of any of your coursework to another institution or for graduate work.

Having said that, I looked on the ABET website (www.abet.org), and both Northeastern and RPI are ABET-accredited.

Answer 3

If the school is not accredited then your degree is looked at as a fake.