Athabasca University (AU) is currently a candidate for accreditation by the U.S. Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. AU attained candidacy status in June 2002 and is expected to achieve U.S. accreditation in the summer of 2005.

AU’s Director of External Relations Stephen Murgatroyd says that achieving U.S. accreditation will help position AU for future growth, but he does not see it as producing a considerable increase in U.S. enrollments. "Growth for us means revenue that we have to find, and I don’t see the U.S. producing significant growth in our undergraduate registrations, which is our bread and butter."

Ten-Year-Old Online MBA and MDE Programs Look Strong

At the graduate level, however, Murgatroyd believes that U.S. regional accreditation could possibly give its online MBA program a boost in enrollments, as well as its online Master’s of Distance Education (MDE) program.

Both the MBA and the MDE online programs were launched ten years ago, giving AU early worldwide recognition in online graduate degree programs in the fields of business management and distance education. The online MBA program is Canada’s largest, enrolling more than 1,100 students. It was recently included on the prestigious list of the world’s top 75 EMBA programs by the Financial Times of London, England. The online MDE program currently enrolls about 380 students, making it one of the largest online graduate-level programs in distance education worldwide. Both programs have students from all over the world, including the United States.

AU is building on the success of its MDE program by developing a new online doctoral program in distance education that is targeted to launch in 2006. Currently the program has been approved internally and is awaiting government approval. AU Professor and Canada Research Chair in Distance Education Terry Anderson says that the new program is in response to professional educators who "are really interested in taking a leadership role in this field and are looking for training and skill development at the doctoral level. It will be designed to enhance the profession instead of offering a straight discipline. So it’s going to be a lot more practically oriented and designed for people who are administrators or leaders in distance education development."

Murgatroyd says that while U.S. accreditation and the further development of its successful online graduate degree programs does prepare AU well for future growth in the U.S. and beyond, the end result from a revenue standpoint will more than likely be "trivial." However, "it is the right thing for us to be doing, and it will help us build brand. We see accreditation as being about making sure that we are the best we can be as an institution. We will become the first Canadian institution of any kind to be fully accredited in the United States for undergraduate and graduate programs."