When choosing a school, whether it’s an online university or a more traditional institution, it’s imperative that you select a venue that’s been accredited. This is admittedly something that students checking out physical colleges don’t spend a lot of time doing, thanks to the ease of learning about schools that have stood in the same place for years or decades. But unfortunately there are some websites designed to look like legitimate online schools that exist solely to take your money without providing you an honest education. These “diploma mills” can be tricky to spot on occasion, but the best way to avoid them is to make sure your school is accredited.

What does that mean? Well, there are a variety of accrediting agencies out there, all designed to do the same thing for online universities that they’ve been doing for more traditional schools for years: investigate the organization and determine its academic worth. A great resource to see if your prospective school has been accredited are the online, searchable databases maintained by the U.S. Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. These indexes will let you know if an accrediting agency has looked into the school and examined its faculty, curriculum, and academic rigor. By visiting with faculty and staff and evaluating course work, accrediting agencies can determine if the school will be worth your time and money.

It’s also important to remember that employers will be more likely to hire you if you’ve graduated from an accredited college or university. This is doubly true for online universities, which tend to suffer from unfair bias because they’re a newer method of education. The only way to guarantee you’ll get a good education — and a good job after graduation — is to enroll at an accredited school.

Additionally, some schools are regionally accredited and some are nationall accredited. The difference is just what it sounds like: one group of agencies focuses on specific parts of the country, while the other looks at the nation as a whole. One isn’t necessarily “better” than the other in any quality sense. An accredited institution is just that, whether regionally or nationally. However, there is a caveat. If you wind up wanting to transfer to a new school, it’s typically easier to transfer course credits from a regionally accredited school to a national one than it is to go the other way. More schools are regionally accredited, and it’s often perceived as the standard, making it tricky to move credits to a nationally accredited school. So before you enroll, be aware that your school’s type of accreditation might affect you down the road.

The bottom line, though, is that a school has been examined and approved by an accrediting body is your best educational bet.