Post Secondary education and accreditation

[mummer1962]

My step daughter wants to attend a post secondary institution that is not accredited. Are we obligated to support this?

[FL_Needs_To_Change]

The accreditation is only relevant if the child in undertaking a course of study that is beyond their ability or relative to their academic performance.

Here is a case where a son (19yrs old) chose a less conventional institute that was not accredited, and the custodial parent requested CS.

CanLII - 1997 CanLII 12054 (ON S.C.)

The son had other funding and summer employment to cover most of the educational costs, one parent offered travel coverage for certain occasions, and the other offered covering a portion of the son's short fall in costs of living.
The judge felt that the CS request was not warranted since all costs associated to the schooling have been addressed and mostly covered. The fact that son was going to live on a tight budget was not good enough to warrant regular CS payments.

[mummer1962]

Thank you for your input, we are going to pay her anyway to help her out, but just wondered if we were obgligated by law.

[Fair4All]

Sometimes accreditation of the education program may be the first step towards the graduate being able to work in his/her field, or being able to more easily become licensed (if a license is necessary). I would check if she's getting into a field where a license is necessary and then find out the consequences of graduating from a non-accredited program vs an accredited one.