Author: Globe Language Services, Inc. (George Fletcher, Ed.D., edited by Alexander Agafonov, Ph.D.)
From its inception as a nation, the United States of America has been a country of immigrants: “Give me your tired, your poor…” the Statue of Liberty proclaims to the world. However, not only the poor and uneducated have arrived to seek their fortunes in this vast country; many well-educated people have also arrived in pursuit of the freedom of scientific and creative expression. What happens to educated people from other countries when they arrive in the United States? Must they prove themselves by taking examinations or going back to school? Who determines the value, acceptance, or rejection of education completed outside the United States? In most of the countries of the world, this is an official function of the government, e.g., National Ministry of Education. What happens in the United States, where there is no Ministry of Education? To answer this question, it is important to understand a historical context, the theory and practice of how equivalents are actually established and presented, and by whom.
Until 1970, the evaluation of international education documents was carried out by two entities: 1) institutions of higher education for their own students, and 2) the U.S. Office of Education (USOE, now the U.S. Department of Education), part of the federal government in Washington, D.C. USOE comparative education evaluators provided this service for free to schools, government agencies, and individuals for a number of years. These same government evaluators researched foreign educational systems, and the government published their findings for the benefit of the U.S. academic community. In 1966, USOE research and publishing in this area was discontinued, and in 1970 the evaluation service was terminated. As a result, with the exception of schools evaluating documents of their own international students, the entire applied international educational credential evaluation process was passed to the private sector.
Following the loss of professional guidance, research and publishing from the U.S. government in the applied comparative education field, two not-for-profit membership organizations stepped forward to support research and publishing in the profession: The American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) and The National Association of Foreign Student Advisors (NAFSA). These organizations developed international education branches and gave evaluators the forum to present their research and to learn comparative education through interaction with experts in the educational systems of different countries. Country studies were contracted out by AACRAO and NAFSA to experienced evaluators. As a result of those studies, books and workshop reports on major educational systems were published, with financial support from sources such as the International Communication Agency. These projects, which included the establishment of U.S. degree equivalents from other countries, credit hours, and grades, were utilized by legitimate evaluators, both within academic institutions and the private sector.
Following the end of the USOE free evaluation service in 1970, private companies were established to fill the vacuum. Most of the early evaluation services were incorporated as not-for-profit, non-tax-paying organizations. Later, this distinction was blurred as many tax-paying evaluation services were incorporated and joined the profession. The entrepreneurs who created the first evaluation companies, as well as the evaluators, came from the admission offices of colleges and universities. In most instances, school personnel were contracted by evaluation companies to do the evaluations. This was the situation until the early 1980s, when evaluators began to be trained by the evaluation companies themselves.
Although AACRAO and NAFSA provided professional and ethical standards during this period, conflicts of interest did appear. Many of the directors, members of the boards of directors, and evaluators in the private companies were also policy and decision makers in AACRAO and NAFSA and utilized their positions to promote their own businesses. As more services and evaluators entered the field and conflicts of interest were brought to light, AACRAO and NAFSA withdrew their exclusive support of select organizations and individuals, and began to represent and allow the participation of all of their members.
In the mid-1980s, a group of evaluation services joined together to form an association that would function much as a “guild” does in England. The National Association of Credential Evaluation Services (NACES®) was founded as a trade association in 1987 to promote excellence in the field of credential evaluation. In the absence of a US government agency that monitors such services, NACES is committed to formulating and maintaining the highest ethical and professional standards in the field. Members of NACES are independent, nongovernmental organizations that provide credential evaluation services to individuals who have completed part or all of their education outside the United States.
SUMMARY
The history of the international education evaluation in the United States continues to be written. In summary, it is possible to state that the United States is very generous in its acceptance of foreign education. Accredited educational programs from any country are given comparable consideration and assigned equivalents for use in the United States; indeed, educational background has become an integral part of many aspects of U.S. immigration policy. Beginning in 1970, the private sector, along with institutions of higher education, have assumed the responsibility of analyzing foreign educational credentials and establishing U.S. equivalents, with the understanding that applied comparative education is not an exact science.
