Yes, you will not find a program that will "certify" you without actually graduating form their program. It's not just because we live in a capitalistic world with a market economy; it's because if they just started handing out certifications without any control over the curriculum covered or assessment of content that you know, their program wouldn't be very attractive to anybody (because anybody could complete it on-line with minimal work). Same thing with colleges, even those on-line and/or those that collate transcripts and give credit for life-experience-- that only goes so far before they start wanting your credits (and your tuition money) to come from, and remain "in-house." The closest thing you will find might be Berklee Online (which offers song-writing, arranging, theory, business and production classes on-line, but again will expect you to take their program), or the place that basically hooks you up with a supervised internship and then the engineer that supervises the internship "signs off" on your experience. This is largely dependent on you having a quality studio and a patient participating engineer in your local area, but I don't think you'll get a degree or a certification out of that experience.
