Discerning dubious from legit foreign schools

[smartdegree]

As someone from North America, the best way to tell is really to check if the major foreign credential evaluators (e.g. WES) recognize the institution / degree.  It does not matter if the degree is prestigious or not in the local country - if the evaluators think it's not equivalent, then the qualification has limited to no value where I live.  Obviously if you live in Europe or Asia, this does not apply.

I'm going to disagree with this, a bit. The most common method I expect employers to use to "evaluate" a degree would be a Google search. If a quick search turns up that the school is prestigious locally, that would be a boon. 

Of course, that's assuming that they even go that far. If employers put that much effort into determining the legitimacy of a degree, there wouldn't be diploma mills.

That might be true but many locally prestigious schools are in a country where English is not spoken (e.g. France, Spain, Italy, China etc).  If we apply the same logic that employers might not be willing to put in the effort to do online research (and I agree that might be probable) then I have my doubts that employers will want to go through foreign websites even if they can use google translate.  But I get your point.  I know some schools in the UK like Heriot Watt in the past where their degrees were not recognized by WES due to the way they were organized.  But those are the exceptions rather than the rule.  

My comment on using WES was just my personal contribution to this thread on ideas for our forum members to verify schools.  Everyone here obviously has different ideas on how to go about this.

Lastly, I live in Canada where WES is widely used in all organizations, from immigration to employment. It is not uncommon here for various companies/organizations to ask for credential evaluations because roughly half of Torontonians were born or educated outside Canada. If for some reason your qualification was considered substandard, then it matters not if it was prestigious in your origin country (e.g. India, China, Philippines, Africa, Caribbean etc).