What community colleges guarantee admission to UC's?

What is meant by a school or college being licensed or accredited by a state board of community colleges?

• I'm trying to unravel the fluff and the rhetoric and get to the facts. A company offers Widget Training to the public. The school is licensed by a state board of community colleges, with a disclaimer that the board of community colleges is not is not an accrediting agency. What does having a state board of community colleges imply? What does being licensed imply or guarantee? What does a board being accredited or not being accredited imply, mean, or guarantee? How do I find out the credibility of the body that performs the accreditation? Who accredits the accrediting agency?

• Answer:

  Accreditation is the process by which a school's curriculum is judged competent. You might think of accrediting agencies as the Consumer Reports of education. From the U.S. Department of Education: "The goal of accreditation is to ensure that education provided by institutions of higher education meets acceptable levels of quality. Accrediting agencies, which are private educational associations of regional or national scope, develop evaluation criteria and conduct peer evaluations to assess whether or not those criteria are met. Institutions and/or programs that request an agency's evaluation and that meet an agency's criteria are then "accredited" by that agency." A state board of higher education or community colleges is basically a governmental organization that licenses public schools, sets tuition rates and public funding amounts for those schools, and in some cases, determines what academic programs those schools offer. Licensing is the same as getting a business license. Since academic institutions are a bit more complicated than a home brewery, the licensing is handled by a board with experience rather than a city clerk. No warranty or guarantee is implied in being licensed, though there are usually bond requirements against malpractice suits or injuries sustained on campus involved with such licensing. Accreditation can be viewed as academic currency. If ABC community college is accredited by XYZ agency, any other school also accredited by XYZ should accept work done at ABC for full college credit, thus preventing duplication and the waste of time and money that means. Thus, an accreditation is only as valuable as the most prestigious school they accredit. A consumer can presume that each of the other schools on that list are of equal academic caliber. Of course, academic worth is subjective and not always level from one program to the next, even in the same college. In the end, you are the judge of how much a given accreditation is worth, but at least you know where to begin to judge that worth.