Certificate Accreditation Program Overview
Introduction
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has launched the new Certificate Accreditation Program (ANSI-CAP) to accredit organizations that issue education and training certificates to U.S. workers. Pilot programs has been selected to fully validate the ANSI accreditation process.
Why Is Accreditation Important?
With a lack of nationwide regulation, oversight, or monitoring consistently applied to all education and/or training bodies that offer certificates, and no nationally recognized set of criteria to evaluate the quality of these programs, consumers are unclear about the meaning of certificates. Specific guidelines are needed to differentiate among certificate programs with varying levels of rigor, and to determine how they differ from personnel certifications.
ANSI-CAP will provide neutral, third-party attestation that a given certificate program meets an American National Standard and promotes better educated and qualified workers. It is also expected to provide quality benchmarks for the design of future certificate programs. With these evaluations and benchmarks in place, workers and employers will be better able to determine the value and meaning of individual personnel certificates.
Applicable Standards and Protocols
Certificate programs will be evaluated for potential accreditation against the standard ASTM E2659-09, Standard Practice for Certificate Programs. This American National Standard developed by ASTM International was selected by the ANSI-CAP Accreditation Committee, a group of volunteer leaders who were chosen for their expertise in the field.
ANSI-CAP will also follow the accreditation process outlined in the international standard ISO/IEC 17011, General Requirements for Accreditation Bodies Accrediting Conformity Assessment Bodies. This process includes using specially trained assessors to review documents submitted by applicants against defined requirements, conducting on-site assessments of all applicants, and making recommendations to the ANSI-CAP Accreditation Committee that is responsible for making the accreditation decisions.