Public Administration and Policy Accreditation

Accreditation is a form of independent, professional certification that focuses on schools and programs in a particular field. Accreditation of public administration and policy schools and programs therefore assures you and your parents that the school adheres to high quality standards. Which means the programs are delivered by qualified faculty and are constantly updated to follow the changes and meet the needs of the relevant industry or working world. Attending an accredited school or program is often thought to make you more competitive on the job market.

There is no national accrediting body for Canadian undergraduate programs in public administration and policy. However, you can also check to see if a school or program has any memberships in, or endorsements by, discipline-specific professional associations which reflect certain standards of quality, but this is not the same as official accreditation. For example, the Canadian Association of Programs in Public Administration (CAPPA) only officially accredits master's programs, but undergraduate universities and colleges may also become members of CAPPA without being officially accredited.

Why Accreditation?
The goal of accreditation is to ensure that education provided by institutions of higher education meets acceptable levels of quality. Accrediting agencies, which are 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.