Many people in this country and overseas have never heard of a foreign credential evaluation service. In reality the foreign credential evaluation service is the organization that reviews the qualifications of foreign education and how they will translate into U.S. educational qualifications with regards to immigrants, certifications and higher education.

Foreign credential evaluation has been a relatively unknown field, however recently, over the last 30 years, it has evolved greatly and is rapidly growing. In the beginning, an educational equivalent for the U.S. was determined by the number of years one had studied in a foreign country compared to the level of education they would have completed in those same years in the U.S. Of course, this is not an accurate evaluation.

Very little amount of regard have been given to education studied annually. Unlike in the US, in most countries the students attend twice as many hours or more of their classes. Over a span of years, the methods used to evaluate foreign education credentials precisely have become something more increasingly difficult.

The job of evaluating foreign credentials used to be spearheaded by the Foreign Credential Evaluation Service. The FCES was shortened in the late 1960s and then terminated in 1970. Now there are no national standards in place in the United States when it comes to evaluating foreign educational credentials.

Evaluation of foreign credentials since 1970 had been largely done by private credential evaluation services or through the offices of colleges and universities. Although the Council had developed initially the placement recommendations that provided the national guidelines for evaluating foreign educational credentials, being a non-government organization, their recommendations are non-binding. The UNESCO have provided international guidelines that are often legally binding, however these are at times ignored.

It should be said that the Council has been in existence since 1955 and their principles generally carry a great deal of weight with many institutions and organizations within the United States. Private evaluation groups, colleges and universities make their own judgment guidelines and many of these are based somewhat upon those made by the Council. In addition, they are helpful in cases of immigration and employment purposes. UNESCO guidelines should be more influential but for unknown reasons most agencies ignore them, even though they are the only ones that are legally-binding.

Most people are unaware of the field known as foreign credential evaluation service. This is a formal effort to perform foreign academic degree evaluation, assessing the relationship of various international credentials to the prevailing academic standards in the United States. These results are then used for immigration and employment purposes. Other uses include professional licensing and academic evaluation. Originally handled in this country directly by the government, this is now left up to private industry or to institutions directly. A major influence, however,are the UNESCO guidelines, which carry a lot of weight in the field. In many cases these are even legally binding.