I recently got accepted into Charleston Southern, and I really love the program. This is the first year for their DPT program, so they are not yet accredited. We were told that they were submitting their application for candidacy December 1st and would know if they are a candidate before we are supposed to enroll in classes. Is it too risky to enroll in the program without them knowing if they are a candidate for accreditation or not?
I feel like they would not allow us to even apply if they did not think that they would be approved as a candidate.
Congrats!! I was accepted there as well, and that was one of my concerns. The program director emailed me with the following:
- 12/1/2021: They submit application for candidacy
- 1/2022: CAPTE comes to campus to interview faculty
- 4/2022: CAPTE will notify CSU if they are permitted to start classes 5/31
He also stated that the US Department of Education recently changed the accreditation guidelines to say that if someone is enrolled in a developing program (like CSU's) and the school doesn't achieve accreditation, students will still be permitted to graduate and sit for the PT licensure exam. He said that prior to this rule change he secured written agreements with several PT schools that will take 55-60 from CSU too, so I guess we would find out in April 2022 if it came down to it (unless part of the accreditation process involves graduating a certain number of students from the program, I'm not really sure all the details there). He stated this basically gives us 2 layers of protection.
The question that isn't 100% answered in my mind is that we wouldn't be able to say we graduated from an accredited university (which I know most jobs require), so I'm not sure how that'd affect employment after the fact. Maybe some employers don't care? Or maybe that's when the agreements with the accredited universities would come into play? I'm really not sure.
All that said, the university has put a lot of time and money into the program, so I'm confident they will make sure it meets accreditation requirements.
