Institutional Accreditors List: All 21 Agencies, and Where Each One Came From

Each card gives you three things and nothing decorative. Take the HLC card as a worked example. Its historic footprint reads AZ AR CO IL IN IA KS MI MN MO NE NM ND OH OK SD WV WI WY. That is 19 state codes, which is where HLC was allowed to accredit before July 2020. It is history, not a limit. The Department's current scope statement for HLC ends with one flat line: "Geographic area of accrediting activities: The United States."

Historic footprint

The states or territories the agency was recognized for before the geographic rule was dropped. Agencies that never had one show "no assigned territory". Selecting a state in the explorer rings the cards whose footprint contains it. It never removes anything from the list, because nothing is removed in real life either.

Degree levels

Usually copied straight from the Department's published scope of recognition for that agency, which is the sentence that decides what an agency may accredit. Two examples are worth knowing. ACCJC's scope caps it at credentials "not to exceed the bachelor degree level", so no ACCJC school awards a master's. WSCUC's scope starts at "the baccalaureate degree or above", so no WSCUC institution is associate-only. Between them they covered California, Hawaii and the Pacific islands at two different altitudes. Three cards are the exception: HLC, MSCHE and NECHE currently have no degree-level sentence in their ED scope at all, so those three levels are quoted from CHEA's dated scope entry instead, and each card says so.

Why "ED-recognized" and "CHEA-recognized" are separate

They are different bodies with different consequences. Recognition by the U.S. Secretary of Education is what lets a school's students draw Pell Grants and federal Direct Loans. Recognition by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation is a voluntary, private quality affirmation with no federal aid consequence. All 21 agencies here hold ED recognition. Only 12 also appear as CHEA-recognized. Three of the seven former regionals, MSCHE, NECHE and WSCUC, are marked on CHEA's own chart as formerly recognized and not currently recognized, because they chose not to keep seeking it. That is a governance decision, not a downgrade of any school.

If you are checking whether a specific school is legitimate, our walkthrough on how to check a college's accreditation takes you through the federal database screen by screen.

Seven agencies split the 50 states, the District of Columbia and five territories between them. The arithmetic is exact: 19 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 11 + 2 = 50 states, with the last two, California and Hawaii, shared by WSCUC and ACCJC at different degree levels. Add DC, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands to MSCHE, and Guam, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands to the two western commissions, and you reach 56 jurisdictions with no gaps and no overlaps except that western pair.

What each one is distinctive for

MSCHE (Middle States Commission on Higher Education) held the only footprint containing a federal district and two Caribbean territories. It now calls itself a global institutional accreditor with over 500 institutions.

NECHE (New England Commission of Higher Education) had the smallest territory, six states. Its own roster page now says members are "primarily from the six New England states" but that it also accredits institutions across the United States and internationally, which is the rule change stated in the agency's own words.

HLC (Higher Learning Commission) had the largest territory, 19 states, and its federal scope is the only one of the seven that names tribal institutions explicitly.

NWCCU (Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities) covered seven states including Nevada and Alaska, which surprises people who expect Nevada to sit with California.

SACSCOC (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges) is the largest of the seven by institution count at 780 or more, and the only one whose recognized territory reached into Latin America. On September 1, 2026 it began doing business as The Commission on Colleges and Universities while keeping the legal name ED recognizes.

WSCUC (WASC Senior College and University Commission) starts at the bachelor's degree. ACCJC stops at it. That single split explains why a California community college and a California research university carry different accreditor names on the same street.

Fourteen of the 21 never had an assigned territory. They were recognized by field, method or institutional mission from the start, which is why the "regional versus national" split was always a poor description of what they do.

DEAC accredits institutions that teach primarily by distance or correspondence, up to and including the professional doctoral degree. Its recognition is defined by delivery method, so no state selection will ever ring it.

ABHE, ATS, TRACS, AARTS and AIJS accredit faith-based institutions: biblical colleges, theological schools and seminaries, Christian colleges, and rabbinical, Talmudic and Jewish Studies institutions. ATS is post-baccalaureate only. AARTS runs from associate through doctorate and includes First Rabbinic and First Talmudic degrees.

ACCSC, ACCET, COE, NACCAS, ABHES, COMTA, MACTE and MSA-CESS accredit career and technical institutions: trade and technical schools, continuing education providers, occupational colleges, cosmetology schools, allied health schools, massage and esthetics schools, Montessori teacher training and postsecondary non-degree career programs.

Two facts on this group are worth carrying with you rather than an opinion. First, several of them carry a Title IV note in ED's list restricting which of their institutions may use the accreditation for federal aid: ABHES to allied health institutions, ACCET to institutions it classifies as vocational, ATS to freestanding seminaries, DEAC to institutions it separately certifies for Title IV. Second, MSA-CESS has been under an ED limitation since May 16, 2025 barring it from accrediting new institutions until it demonstrates compliance with three sections of 34 CFR 602.21. Both facts are in the same federal list the seven appear on.

The Department of Education published a final rule on November 1, 2019, at 84 FR 58834, effective July 1, 2020. It removed "geographic area of accrediting activities" from the regulatory definition of an agency's scope of recognition. The Department's stated reason was that recognizing geographic scope "may discourage multiple agencies from also including the same State in their geographic scope", and that many agencies were already operating outside their recognized region anyway.

Read the current regulation and you can see the hole where the map used to be. Under 34 CFR 602.3, "scope of recognition" is now defined by four things: types of degrees and certificates covered, types of institutions and programs covered, types of preaccreditation status covered, and coverage of distance or correspondence education. Geography is not one of them. The regulation also defines an "institutional accrediting agency" plainly as one "that accredits institutions of higher education", with no tiers.

Three practical consequences follow.

1. A school in Ohio may hold HLC accreditation, or MSCHE, or NECHE, or DEAC, or any other recognized institutional accreditor. Nothing in federal rule assigns it to HLC.
2. An agency named after a region is a brand, not a boundary. NECHE says so on its own roster page.
3. "Regionally accredited" has no legal meaning as of September 2026. If an application form asks for it, it is asking a question the regulations stopped answering six years ago. Our page on regional versus national accreditation myths works through the beliefs that survived the change, and the one on transferring credits between accredited schools covers what receiving registrars actually check.

This page identifies accreditors. It does not tell you the accreditation status of any individual school, and a school can be on probation, on show cause, or have lost accreditation entirely while its accreditor stays perfectly well recognized. Three steps, in this order.

1. Look the school up in DAPIP. The Department's Database of Accredited Postsecondary Institutions and Programs is the federal record. Search the institution by name and read which agency accredits it and on what date the status was last reported.
2. Find that agency on this page and open its own directory. The per-card link goes to the accreditor's public roster. Agencies publish current status, including probation and show cause, faster than the federal database refreshes.
3. Read the status word, not the agency name. "Accredited" and "candidate" are different. Candidacy or preaccreditation is not accreditation, and at some agencies it does not carry Title IV eligibility. If the two sources disagree, phone the accreditor.

Worked example. Suppose a private online university in Ohio lists "DEAC accredited" in its footer. Step one shows DEAC in DAPIP as the accrediting agency. Step two, this page, shows DEAC is ED-recognized and CHEA-recognized, accredits up to the professional doctoral level, and carries a Title IV note: only DEAC institutions the agency separately certifies for Title IV can be used for federal aid. Step three sends you to DEAC's own directory to confirm that this particular school is certified, not merely accredited. The Ohio address is irrelevant at every step, which is the whole point of this page.

Once you know the accreditor is real, the next questions are money and fit. The college list builder is where to record what you find alongside cost and deadlines, colleges that accept a 3.0 GPA covers realistic targets, and if an offer arrives with strings attached, read what a conditional offer means before you deposit.

They were never left out, and the state selector includes all six non-state jurisdictions for that reason.

Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands sat inside MSCHE's historic footprint alongside Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia. Guam, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands sat inside the western pair: WSCUC for baccalaureate institutions and above, ACCJC for institutions whose primary mission is the associate degree. ACCJC's 2019 scope also reached three sovereign states in free association with the United States, Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands, which are not U.S. jurisdictions and so are not in the selector.

Overseas institutions were handled by exception language rather than by a separate agency. MSCHE's scope covered "other geographical areas outside the United States in which the Commission conducts accrediting activities". NECHE's and NWCCU's said "and internationally". SACSCOC's named Latin America and other approved international sites. WSCUC's covered institutions outside the United States "capable of being reviewed effectively by WASC processes". After July 2020 the question stopped being interesting, because none of the seven has a territorial limit left to except itself from.

A practical note for international applicants: a U.S. institutional accreditor accrediting a campus abroad is a different thing from a foreign ministry recognizing a degree. If you plan to study in the United States and later use the credential elsewhere, verify both. Full-time status rules, which affect visas and aid, are covered in how many credit hours count as full time.

Every field was read from a primary source on September 8, 2026. Legal names, degree levels, Title IV notes and the "throughout the United States" geographic lines come from the Department of Education's own institutional accrediting agencies list. CHEA status comes from CHEA's combined CHEA and USDE recognition chart, where a dash means not recognized and an asterisk means formerly recognized. Historic footprints come from CHEA's directory of recognized organizations as it stood on June 19, 2019, more than a year before the geographic rule was removed, which is why it is the right snapshot to quote.

Institution counts are only shown where an agency publishes one. Three do: SACSCOC lists 780 or more, MSCHE over 500, NECHE over 200. The other 18 cards read "not published" rather than a guess, and the size sort pushes them to the bottom rather than treating them as zero. You will see figures elsewhere for the seven former regionals adding up to roughly 3,000 institutions and 17 million students. No agency site opened for this page published that pairing, so it is not printed here.

CampusBreeze makes free study tools and guides. If a row here is out of date, the federal database is the authority and it takes precedence over this page every time.