Hello, I am American and living in the UK. I have a Bachelor of Business Administration with a concentration in Management. I graduated in 2003, worked in an insurance company for 3 years and moved to the UK to start a family. My kids are older now and I would like to start my masters. There are 2 relatively good universities where I live in Northern Ireland. They both offer MBA programs the only problem is they are not accredited. I have researched their curriculum and it doesn't deviate much from other schools etc. So my question is, does it really matter? Would I be wasting my time? Or just the fact that you have an MBA will open many doors regardless?
I can pursue my masters from my own University in USA but they charge almost triple what I would be paying here, however, they are accredited.
Do workplaces actually ask for accreditation? or is it a criteria for belonging to certain business organizations?
I would like my masters to develop new skills and just continue on what I had studied with my bachelor. I would really appreciate your thoughts on the matter whether negative or positive.

What are your goals? If you want mainstream MBA roles in firms that hire a lot of MBAs then they will only hire from the best schools. It's a false economy to study at an inferior schools.

No, employers won't generally ask to see if your MBA program is accredited. However, the accredited schools will have most likely built stronger relationships with firms that MBAs want to work at.

A big part of the value of an MBA is what kind of relationships your school has with employers.

Another option would be to do an accredited MBA from an online school like Warwick, Bradford, etc.

I am planning to study in the UK and potentially move back home to work. I am not interested in any particular business sector, I just want to go home fresh and with more preparation than when I left??

In that case I'd consider a mostly-online US masters: that will have more credibility than a Northern Irish school people have not heard of. The Illinois IMBA is great value at $20k. Even the Harvard MLA in management is around the same price as the Queens MBA: $28k.

This is a conversation I have regularly with colleagues and friends when discussing the value of different MBA's and the answer I always give is the more the MBA has to achieve for you the more important accreditation is i.e. if your first degree has little relevance to business or your future plans, if you want to move into consultancy or want to work/live in another country etc

If however you are already highly qualified in your field, where an MBA may not even be your highest qualification, then accreditation may be nowhere near as important in the scheme of things.

That's great advice. If you are expecting to make big career shifts (big salary bump, or into a different industry or country) then you're going to want an accredited MBA. If you're just doing it to build on your current skill set or get some business knowledge accreditation becomes less important. But at least with an accredited MBA, you know you'll be getting a quality education and you won't be getting ripped off. With some unaccredited schools, this is not so certain.