Publication: Assessing international qualifications

A good practice booklet regarding admissions criteria and credential evaluation, with special focus on China and India in the Environmental Sciences field.

Annually about 3.5 million students leave their homes to pursue studies abroad. According to OECD report Education at Glance 2010, the number of international students in the world has almost doubled over the past decade.

At the same time, higher education markets are becoming ever more competitive and higher education institutions are investing more in attracting talented students from around the globe. Consequently, universities are increasingly investing in further training of their admissions staff to ensure that they are competent in carrying out the student selection in a way that meets the quality standards of their institution. Although many European universities already have long traditions in international student recruitment, some others are merely setting up their international student admission policies and may lack the internal structure for handling the process.

As part of the Erasmus Mundus project LEANES, a booklet has been produced, with a collection of good practices regarding credential evaluation and student admission in general. It aims to serve as a toolkit for those starting up their international student recruitment by providing tools regarding admissions criteria, credential evaluation, grade comparison and fraud detection. A special focus is given to Chinese and Indian credential evaluation in the field of Environmental Science.

The examples presented in this booklet are a compilation of practices in various European and North American universities. The information was gathered through questionnaires, interviews and browsing through web sites of universities and other relevant bodies.

This booklet is a product of the European Commission funded Erasmus Mundus Action 3 project called Linking European and Asian Networks in the field of Environmental Sciences (LEANES). LEANES aimed at improving the accessibility and enhancing the profile of the European Higher Education Area in order to facilitate and promote study opportunities in Europe for third country (Asian) students. The project was focused mainly on education in the Environmental Sciences. LEANES was conducted by Trinity College Dublin (Ireland), Research School for Socio-Economic and Natural Sciences of the Environment (the Netherlands), University of Eastern Finland and StudyPortals, the Netherlands.

The Assessing International Qualifications good practice booklet is available for download as PDF.