Lanier Tech Earns ‘Gold Standard’ Accreditation

, which has a campus in Winder, has received accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges.

“This is the culmination of a five-year effort by Lanier Technical College,” President Russell Vandiver said in a release announcing the accreditation. “Regional accreditation by a body such as SACS-COC is the gold standard for academic quality. This accreditation, along with our long-standing affiliation with the Council on Occupational Education, assures students they are getting the very best in workforce development education.”

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools is the regional accrediting agency for the southeastern United States focusing on academic quality and is recognized by both the U.S. Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation with full accrediting authority. The Council on Occupational Education is a national body focusing on the standards necessary to ensure quality career and technical education.

Lanier Tech joins almost 800 other regionally accredited colleges in the south and southeast, including University of System of Georgia schools such as the University of Georgia and Georgia Institute of Technology, as well as private universities such as Emory. SACS-COC accredited schools are held to a high standard of integrity and academic rigor.

An immediate benefit for Lanier Tech students is an associate degree in general education coursework will now more easily transfer to other colleges and universities — many colleges have policies specifying that only credit from regionally accredited schools will be accepted for transfer.

“We want our students to be successful in life," Vandiver said in the release. "Their success is our report card. A recent study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that on average people change jobs 11 times between the ages of 18 and 44. For a lot of people, that means going back to school at some point. With regional accreditation, their academic work at Lanier Tech will more readily count toward future degrees.”