Why it pays to check if your school in the US is accredited

In December last , 19 Indian students were not allowed to board an Air India flight bound to San Francisco. The students had been told that the universities they were headed to were under ‘scrutiny’. In January, several other students were made to return to India without being given a reason for the deportation. These weren’t one-off incidents and have happened several times in the past. “The mistake that these students made was not checking if the schools they’d applied to were accredited,” says Kent Thomas, Assistant Vice President, International Programmes, Missouri State University.

The University, located in Springfield, Missouri, is a public university with over 1,700 international students, of which 51 are Indians. Speaking to BLonCampus about the university, he said that the university offered accredited programmes, some of which had been accredited by the Higher Learning Commission of the United States, at a reasonable cost.

Ideal combination

“The management programme that is offered by Missouri State has been accredited by Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, which puts it in the top 10 per cent of the schools in the US and top two per cent in the world.” Thomas says. He adds: “We also accept students with 15 years of education, in contrast to a lot of other American institutions insisting that students have 16 years.”

“Missouri State is the ideal combination of a good location, a welcoming community and the opportunity to study at a highly accredited institution. It really helps a parent’s peace of mind knowing that their child is studying at a good institution.” Thomas continues, adding that Missouri State University offers 200 courses, including 52 graduate degree courses and five professional doctoral degree programmes.

Networking opportunities

Talking about the management courses offered at Missouri State, he said that while in terms of teaching they weren’t all that different, “the experiences that a student is offered at Missouri State is different as compared to what they’d have at a college in India. Now, in an Indian classroom, all the students’ realities are the same, whereas at Missouri State, they have classmates from all over the world.” He added that studying in a university abroad also helps with networking.

“We at Missouri State are aware of the level of saturation that the sector of management is reaching, both in India and in the US. So we would recommend students to pursue a degree in a specialised course, such as project management, as opposed to an MBA. These are the areas people are eager to hire from and students can get a job right out of college,” Thomas says.

Missouri State has tie-ups with eight colleges in India, including the likes of Osmania University, SRM University and Manav Rachna International University.