University of the People UoPeople accreditation: the ultimate guide

First of all, before you read this article, we recommend its introduction in the homepage.

Fake news about WASC regional accreditation

WASC Senior College and University Commission, also known as WSCUC, is a serious regional accrediting body, unlike UoPeople's DEAC. In February 2020, UoPeople claimed to be going to receive WASC regional accreditation. WASC didn't issue any statements but UoPeople started to bombard Internet forums, social networks, YouTube etc. claiming that they were going to be accredited. Fake news! You just have to read WASC's official page instead of UoPeople's fake articles: University of the People is just a candidate, which means it is not accredited by WASC because UoPeople's application was rejected. UoPeople can try again in a few years, but nobody really knows when it will be accredited (assuming it will be accredited). Besides, accreditation is a long process — unless you get accredited after a couple of days by accreditation mills such as DETC-DEAC. DEAC, which is the previously defunct DETC, is not a regional accreditation body and has nothing to do with WASC. In the USA, regional accreditation is the most reputable form of accreditation, which allows students and graduates to transfer credits from an institution to others, or to qualify for state licensure. This means that UoPeople.edu is not regionally accredited in America, and the reason is very simple: unlike other universities including — online universities — which have real headquarters, real facilities, real professors and instructors etc., University of the People doesn't have anything, and almost no one considers it a real and legitimate school.

Besides, UoPeople reps now claim that "national accreditation is the same as regional accreditation, because they are both legal". First of all, nobody said that national accreditation is illegal — technically it is not illegal — but the point is that UoPeople's ridiculous national self-accreditation, namely DETC-DEAC, has no credibility in academia, in business or in the workplace. It is no accident that UoPeople also tried to get regional accreditation through WASC (without success): if national and regional accreditation were the same thing, why would UoPeople seek regional accreditation too?

UoPeople fake worldwide accreditation

University of the People sells many degrees in Africa and Asia. Unfortunately, people in those countries don't know that UoPeople degrees are not accredited there and are therefore useless: very few (important) universities in the world have multiple international accreditations, which allow them to issue degrees in more than one country. This is not the case with the tiny University of the People, which is barely accredited in the US and is unaccredited in the rest of the world. For the sake of clarity, UoPeople is not accredited in Europe, Africa, Asia or Oceania.

Comprehensive list of countries where University of the People UoPeople.edu is either accredited or unaccredited

Bottom line: when UoPeople's owner and reps aka ambassadors claim it to be fully accredited, they are blatantly lying.

University of the People has published a long list on Reddit (List of international universities accepting UoPeople credentials) claiming that hundreds of real and accredited universities accept credits transferred from UoPeople.edu. That list is completely false. Just as an example, UoPeople claims that you can transfer credits to the Sapienza Università di Roma Italia, which is one of the largest universities in Europe and in the world. We phoned this university, but they had never heard of University of the People. They also said that any foreign university that wants to transfer credits to Rome Sapienza — or any other Italian university — must be recognized by the competent Italian embassy or consulate (in this case, it would be the Consulate General of Italy in Los Angeles). Since University of the People is not recognized by any embassies or consulates, transferring credits would be illegal and its degrees are invalid in Italy. Besides, UoPeople's blog, which we described here, in an article titled "Will my degree be relevant in my country?", claims that "Upon graduation, UoPeople students are ready and prepared to continue studying in high-quality educational institutions. They have continued their education at Carnegie Mellon University of Australia, University of Nairobi, Sapienza University of Rome, University of Newcastle in Australia, University of Waikato in New Zealand and elsewhere." As we have seen, these kinds of claims are all false, because Sapienza University of Rome confirmed that the institution never accepted students from the unknown University of the People, and it is no accident that UoPeople does not show any documents.

The unaccredited laughable UoPeople MBA

There exist four important accrediting agencies for MBA programs: the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB, chiefly American), the Association of MBAs (AMBA, chiefly British), the Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP, chiefly American), and the EFMD Quality Improvement System (EQUIS, chiefly European). The best MBA programs hold accreditation from one or more of these accrediting bodies.

Since UoPeople.edu is not accredited by any of them, its "MBA" is just a ridiculous piece of paper, devoid of recognition in the business world, which you could have printed yourself without paying thousands of dollars to the Israeli University of the People Education Ltd diploma mill.

UoPeople claims that other MBAs are "too expensive", while UoPeople's MBA is a bargain and an "education revolution". However, after attending a legit business school, accredited by a legit business accrediting body, you will receive a respectable and accredited real MBA. Operating a business school — not a tiny offshore virtual diploma mill — is expensive, which is why a real MBA program is "expensive".

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