Short version: Its not great but if you want your credits to transfer you go to a regionally accredited school. Its old and spent a large part of its history entrenching itself in the American education industry, therefore its automatically granted legitimacy.
There are schools with a shit curriculum that have regional accreditation. The reason it matters to Americans is because most large universities are more significantly more accepting of transferring credits that come from a regionally accredited school.
I've been to nationally and regionally accredited schools. My degree was from a top 200 school in the US. The classes I took at the "lesser" institution were significantly more rigorous and significantly more effective at teaching skills relevant to the major I was studying.
I've known several people that went to schools that have been sued or otherwise have terrible reputations for being predatory for profit schools like ITT and the University of Phoenix. Their coursework was frequently more difficult than mine.
To be fair though, those schools were sued partly because of their shady high pressure sales tactics and for tricking people into taking on massive amounts of debt to take classes. That's pretty scummy, but based on the experiences of my friends it seemed like they at least had legitimate work to do in order to graduate.
Note: I don't doubt that on average the regionally accredited schools have been more thoroughly vetted. I'm just saying accreditation is not even close to perfect so the only reason it matters in the US is because the credits are easily transferable.
There are schools with a shit curriculum that have regional accreditation. The reason it matters to Americans is because most large universities are more significantly more accepting of transferring credits that come from a regionally accredited school.
I've been to nationally and regionally accredited schools. My degree was from a top 200 school in the US. The classes I took at the "lesser" institution were significantly more rigorous and significantly more effective at teaching skills relevant to the major I was studying.
I've known several people that went to schools that have been sued or otherwise have terrible reputations for being predatory for profit schools like ITT and the University of Phoenix. Their coursework was frequently more difficult than mine.
To be fair though, those schools were sued partly because of their shady high pressure sales tactics and for tricking people into taking on massive amounts of debt to take classes. That's pretty scummy, but based on the experiences of my friends it seemed like they at least had legitimate work to do in order to graduate.
Note: I don't doubt that on average the regionally accredited schools have been more thoroughly vetted. I'm just saying accreditation is not even close to perfect so the only reason it matters in the US is because the credits are easily transferable.