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.

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.