The US has
the questionable honor of having the most inequitable, the most
irrelevant, and the most expensive system of professional psychology
qualification evaluation in the world.
THE TWO-TIER SYSTEM OF
FOREIGN CREDENTIAL EVALUATION
Unlike other countries, the US uses a two-tier system to assess those
with internationally obtained qualifications in
psychology.
At the first stage, the
qualifications are assessed by non-professionals who assign a general
"level" rating to the program.
At the second stage, the
qualifications which have been assessed as equivalent to an American
doctorate or PhD are examined for content by assessors who may, or may
not, be qualified to practise psychology in the USA. These
assessors include employees of the State Psychology Licensing Boards, the Association of
State and Provincial Psychology Boards (ASPPB), the American
Psychological Association (APA) and the National Register of
Health Professionals in Psychology (NRHPP).
FIRST STAGE ASSESSMENT
The first stage assessment of
internationally-obtained psychology qualifications [referred to in the
US as "foreign credential evaluation"] is generally assigned
to US college and university admission staff or to the employees of
commercial enterprises which are members or affiliates of NACES.
NACES is a self-accredited group
which is
unregulated by government or professional bodies and is not
accountable to anyone but itself. Its members are not required
or encouraged to publish the results of their evaluations thus making
it difficult to challenge the typical validity of these assessments in
relation to international realities.
The group, and its
affiliates and associates, publish material purporting to compare the
educational systems of selected foreign countries with comparable
levels in the American system. What these publications all fail to acknowledge
is that the functional orientation of the American tertiary system is
incompatible with nearly all other systems and cannot be reasonably compared
to international systems of professional training. The
NACES group see nothing incongruent about comparing a professionally
accredited highly focused undergraduate degree with a
non-professionally accredited generalist American College Bachelor
degree.
Indeed, few of these assessors appear to be aware that there is any difference between a
generalist degree and a professional degree or to be aware that
professional credential evaluation in other countries is distinct from
the assessment of qualifications for the purposes of immigration and
general (non-professional) employment.
First stage assessment
concentrates on a comparison of educational systems rather than on a
comparison of psychology training programs. Not surprisingly,
first stage assessors have little or no professional training. (Click
here to see a listing of the qualifications of the US credential
evaluators preferred by US psychology licensing bodies).
In other words, first-stage
assessors do not have the qualifications to make sensible decisions about
the US-comparability of foreign professional
qualifications. (Click
here for a collection of US credential evaluator bloopers.)
SECOND STAGE ASSESSMENT
Second-stage
assessors are required by legislation and/or regulations to ignore the
psychology content of any qualification which is dismissed by the
first-stage assessors as "undergraduate" or, in most States,
as "non-doctoral". They are generally entirely
ignorant of the limitations of the first-stage assessors as well as of
international educational structures for training professional
psychologists. They are rarely aware that most foreign PhDs are
not designed to provide training in professional psychology and are
not accredited for that purpose by psychology licensing
agencies. They are also rarely aware that international
education systems provide professional training in programs which the
NACES group assess as equivalent to a non-professional general
education US Bachelor degree. They are also rarely aware that
some countries have university legislation that prohibits them from
offering course work PhDs.
The result is that assessment at
this level compares functionally in-equivalent programs which appear
to be content inferior to what is naively supposed to be the US
counterpart.
THE NEXT STAGE
The continuation of the current
inequitable practices in the licensing of foreign-trained
psychologists in the US depends on the continuing naivette of American
psychologists about the US-comparability of international programs
designed to train professional psychologists.
It also depends on the
continuation of legislation and regulations which contain language
which effectively ensures that internationally-trained psychologists
are discriminated against on the basis of the names which non-US
educational institutions give to accredited psychology
programs.
This Web Site is attempting to gain
information which can be used to lobby for a more equitable US system of
qualification assessment for internationally trained
psychologists. This information will also be included in
submissions aimed at replacing discriminatory legislative material
with more appropriate phrases.