Noted in the link for Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) is a sub-link listing all known colleges and universities in the world. The list is not inclusive of the newest institutions including the Academy's own research model. Otherwise it is the most comprehensive list presently published.

What it shows is that 4/5ths of the world's institutions of higher learning are not accredited by the US Department of Education, a little known fact rarely mentioned. However, most  non-accredited USA institutions do hold a license to offer degrees from the states where they are domiciled and most all the schools in other countries, also non accredited in the USA, hold licenses and accreditation from their host nation. The number of individual government-sanctioned national accrediting offices, agencies and ministries number at least 189. US bloggers, and even US News & World Report, ignore most of this list of the world's "other" accredited schools and concentrate their major efforts on the USA accredited school mainstream exclusively.

The perception by Americans who promote US accreditation as the "gold standard" dismiss a growing and major impact international schools are having on the future of global higher education, What institutions of higher learning should be considering is not adding one or even two or three local accreditations in their home nation, but multiple, multinational accreditation globally. 

Online education is changing the picture of higher education rapidly. Today, a small, obscure school literally located in Nowhere, Anywhere, the World, can leap over traditional, well endowed, and highly recognized schools, and with a single bound, capture, market, and grow to unimaginable proportions.

The new question then is not who or what accredits the school, rather, it is -- How much accreditation does the school need to have? To meet this new 'raising of the bar', many of the marginal and long considered 'less than worthy' schools have succeeded in acquiring recognition from so-called non-government-sanctioned agencies and other nations all over the world and in multiple forms. It is worthy of note too, not to dismiss them out-of-hand because they are coming after students and the American student market. Some are quite successful and more are coming every day. 

What is essential to recognize is that in a global village, accreditation does take on many forms. With most of the world's institutions of higher learning not accredited by or desiring to seek US accreditation, the competition for students worldwide will continue to grow and become increasingly more intense. The burgeoning competition is not just directed to and among American schools but historic traditional institutions as well, regardless of where in the world they are located, licensed or accredited.

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