The Milwaukee Symposium

Refining the Methodology for Comparing U.S.
and Foreign Educational Credentials

1997

Ann Fletcher
Caroline Aldrich-Langen

This publication is the result of the Milwaukee Symposium held at the Wyndham Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin from June 19 to 23, 1996.

Contents

I Introduction

II Considerations for Refining our Methodology

III Secondary Education and Transition to Higher Education

IV Undergraduate Programs and Transition to Graduate Education

V Graduate Programs

VI The Proposed Methodology

VII Institutional Self Analysis

Appendix A: Useful References

Appendix B: Milwaukee Symposium Participants

Published by Projects for International Education Research (PIER)

PIER is sponsored by

American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers

NAFSA: Association of International Educators

The College Board

The Milwaukee Symposium was funded by generous donations from the following organizations:

American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO)
Education Evaluators International, Inc.
Education International, Inc.
Educational Credential Evaluators, Inc.
Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC)
Graduate Record Examination (GRE)
International Education Research Foundation, Inc.
Josef Silny and Associates, Inc.
Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL)
USIA Field Service Grant, administered by NAFSA: Association of International Educators
World Education Services, Inc.

I

Introduction

U.S. high schools, colleges and universities enroll large numbers of students from throughout the world. Educational institutions in the United States establish their own admissions standards and programs of study. State governments mandate certain requirements for public institutions, but the federal government has little influence over academic policies and admission practices. There are no national government standards for assessing foreign educational credentials.

Guidelines for assessing foreign educational credentials have come primarily from placement recommendations developed by the National Council on the Evaluation of Foreign Educational Credentials (the Council) and published in publications of the World Education Series (WES) and Projects in International Education Research (PIER).

The Council is an interassociational group of representatives from the following national educational associations: American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, American Association of Community Colleges, American Council on Education, the College Board, the Council of Graduate Schools, the Institute of International Education, and NAFSA: Association of International Educators. Observer organizations have included the United States Information Agency, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the New York State Education Department.

Member organizations of the Council appoint representatives, usually for a period of three years, to represent them in Council deliberations. These representatives usually hold administrative appointments at colleges and universities, at education association headquarters, or at private credential evaluation services.

The role of the Council is to provide guidelines for interpreting foreign educational credentials for the placement of holders of these credentials in U.S. educational and other institutions. The Council reviews, modifies, and approves placement recommendations drafted by the authors of publications which are resources for the evaluation of foreign educational credentials for academic and professional purposes. The Council also helps to establish priorities, guidelines and review procedures for international admissions publications.

The process that has produced Council placement recommendations, implemented in the 1950s, generally has served the U.S. admissions community well. However, the needs of admissions officers have changed, the backgrounds of applicants are more varied, and increased international mobility of students and scholars has focused attention on the quality and consistency of the credentials evaluation process, both in the United States and in other countries.

The Oregon Symposium was held in July 1989 to discuss issues and priorities for the production of information for the international admissions community in the United States in the context of constrained resources and new technologies. Recommendations from the Oregon Symposium led to improvements in the work of the Council and to the publication of NAFSA Working Paper #23: Guide to Placement Recommendations. This guide describes criteria used by the Council in reviewing educational credentials and includes interpretations of these recommendations.

Council representatives have attended a series of international meetings in recent years, primarily in Europe, that address methodology and procedures for assessing educational credentials across national boundaries. In 1996, U.S. representatives participated in discussions leading to a revised Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications Concerning Higher Education in the European Region of UNESCO, the region of which the United States is a part.

The increased visibility of the Council's work led to the conceptualization of the Milwaukee Symposium: Refining the Methodology for Comparing Foreign and U.S. Educational Credentials, which was held in June 1996. The original purpose of the Milwaukee Symposium was to articulate a methodology that would be used by the Council to evaluate foreign educational credentials. The goals were to provide transparency in the process used to evaluate credentials, to promote greater consistency in the evaluation of similar credentials over time, and to consider ways in which recommendations could provide more information to users.

The goals of the symposium were developed with three audiences in mind:

users of Council recommendations in the United States who need to better understand how placement recommendations are developed, how they should be interpreted in the context of an institution's policies, and how admission and placement decisions can be explained to students, faculty, and administrators

authors of publications for the U.S. admissions and international exchange community.

colleagues in other countries who are involved in the exchange of students and scholars, which may involve advising students on study in the United States, admitting U.S. students to institutions in their countries, or evaluating educational credentials from other countries for placement in academic institutions or for professional purposes.

However, a broader goal for the symposium developed: to describe a methodological approach that can be used by individuals in the field to evaluate credentials and to determine their relevance in the context of institutional admission and placement policies. One symposium participant wrote the following: "It is my hope that the symposium can provide a system (methodology) that a credential evaluator, when confronted with an unusual credential that is not addressed in easily obtainable resources, can go through and feel confident that she/he used a valid decision-making framework. Can we address the needs of a range of credential evaluation skills, abilities, and resources? Can we develop guidelines that could be used by an evaluator with limitations as well as one with richer resources? Can we come up with a document that can really be used by those in the field?

Twenty-five specialists in the field of international education and credential analysis met in Milwaukee for three days to review specific features of U.S. upper secondary, undergraduate, and graduate education, with particular attention to the transition from one level to another. Participants culled the critical factors which signify minimal benchmarks of U.S. higher education as well as the content of academic preparation required by different types of institutions and programs. This review of the U.S. system and culling of critical factors may provide us with clues for use when comparing a foreign credential with a particular U.S. level of education and program of study. Participants brought to these wide-ranging discussions their perspectives from private and public two-year, four-year, and graduate level institutions from throughout the United States.

Animated discussions led to a unanimous conclusion: the work of this symposium is an evolving process; much more remains to be done. The methodology described in this report will continue to be tested and revised. Accordingly, this report is one in a series of publications on the refinement of a methodology and implementation of new recommendation formats.