Discerning dubious from legit foreign schools

[rachel83az]

The discussion of foreign schools comes up often here, especially in regards to graduate degrees. But because most of the students that visit are from the US, we don't always know how to tell when a school is legit or not. If you have information about specific countries, please share here.

France:

I wanted to correct this part of my post cause i think people are mixing or not aware how it works in France.
This link @Messdiener is applying for licensing from the;
a) Ministère de l'Éducation nationale, de l'Enfance et de la Jeunesse https://www.education.gouv.fr  (Ministry of National Education and Youth)

...what you should be looking at is

b) Ministère de l'enseignement supérieur https://www.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/fr  (Ministry of Higher Education)

This link explains it: https://www.european-agency.org/country-...epartments
If it's not listed in:
1. https://www.hceres.fr/en/recherche
2. https://www.cefdg.fr/fr/ecoles-et-formations-visees
3. https://data.enseignementsup-recherche.g...eur/table/

Or checking the bag pages for:
1. https://www.enseignementsup-recherche.go...e-de-46529
2. https://www.enseignementsup-recherche.go...orat-46523

Then i would avoid it. Especially if you can not find it on ANABIN or has a score H-. An easy guide for checking this is going to the https://www.enic-naric.net/page-France and browse for Recognised Higher Education Institutions. Safest and 100% most accurate.

[JPN]

There is a TAICEP (The Association for International Credential Evaluation Professionals) spreadsheet listing out publicly available education guide/country profiles for foreign credentials. It's dated 2020 so you could potentially find new materials since then.

From here, you can get a sense of how foreign credential evaluators would recognize certain degrees, and what the "responsible authority" is in a given country (i.e., the organization/ministry of education that provides accreditation/recognition of post-secondary institutions).

Link: https://www.taicep.org/taiceporgwp/wp-co...heets.xlsx

[JPN]

Also, should point out that some Foreign Credential Evaluators offer a Educational Program Pre-Assessment.

UofT CES charges $226 CAD to evaluate 3 programs for Canada: https://learn.utoronto.ca/comparative-ed...onal-forms - I don't know about the US.

It's worthwhile doing one of these before blowing $16k on some DBA program at a strangely organized foreign university/school.

[siersema]

The discussion of foreign schools comes up often here, especially in regards to graduate degrees. But because most of the students that visit are from the US, we don't always know how to tell when a school is legit or not. If you have information about specific countries, please share here.

South Africa:

List of Universities and Private Higher Education. 
https://www.dhet.gov.za/

I am not from the country. I did some research as they can be an economical option.

[armado]

List of Universities in Italia

https://www.mur.gov.it/it/aree-tematiche...universita

[Kab]

If somebody want to check Spanish universities or studies:
(top of the web page has the possibility to change to English)

https://www.educacionyfp.gob.es/servicio.../ruct.html

Is a button on the top that says: "acceso al servicio online"
(access to the online service)
It will direct you to another page where you can check universities, studies etc. should be prior studies and actual offer.
The 1-center and the 2-study itself need to be valid at the moment of study.
If only the center is recognized then you have a "titulo propio" of a university institution.

In case of doubt when you check the database and find that a University has multiple institutions inside. Usually the university is the big umbrella and then inside you can find faculties (facultades universitarias) an schools (escuelas universitarias). In the degree can appear the faculty/school or not.

[Harry101]

In my experience browsing non English websites goes easier with Microsoft Edge, the application/Browser ask's you if you want the whole site translated to the language of your choice, and with a simple click you can switch back to the original.

Also there are guides for Chrome, Opera, Safari and other browsers. It really makes a difference. In General the Enic-Naric is shaping to be the most reliable source for Higher education links on verified bodies;

https://www.enic-naric.net/page-homepage It is my go to page for these things. 55 countries are listed so far.

[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.

The way I check is to see if WES has done any previous evaluations of a school. WES offers a credential badge that can be shared by customers through their Linkedin profile. What I do is do a google search of people with these qualifications in LinkedIn and specify in the search to add: "Verified Academic Credential". So a sample google search for, let's say ESGCI is:

ESGCI "Verified Academic Credential" site:linkedin.com/in

I then get a LinkedIn profile like this one:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amine-zabian...bdomain=ar

Their profile has a link to the WES evaluation:
https://badges.wes.org/Evidence?i=bafe7c...ba&type=ca

You can do the same for many other institutions to see if they have a WES evaluation. I trust WES as they are being relied on for their credential evaluations by most well known universities in the US and Canada.

[Maniac Craniac]

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.

[xianbd]

wanna know if some university in the UK is legitimate, you can Check if your university or college can award a degree: Overview - GOV.UK (http://www.gov.uk)