Professional and Academic Accreditation in the U.S.

The International Affairs Office of the U.S. Department of Education compiles useful information of the technical process that foreign students and professional need to carry out when coming to the U.S. as there is not a central government-run agency that performs this task.

For professionals, the competent U.S. authority for recognizing previous education and qualifications are:

• The U.S. employer, in case the applicant seeks to obtain work in an unregulated occupation; or
• The appropriate state or territorial licensing authority for the jurisdiction in which the applicant wants to work, in case they seek to practice a regulated profession.

For students wishing to continue post-secondary education, the competent U.S. authority for recognizing previous education and qualifications will be the U.S. school or higher education institution in which the student seeks to enroll. Therefore, they need to contact the international admissions office (undergraduate or graduate) for instructions on what to do and how to get their education evaluated. Some institutions and schools perform the evaluation themselves, but most will refer the applicant to a credential evaluation service.

These are some of the credencial evaluation agencies that operate nationwide.

• WES (World Education Services)
• EDUCATION CREDENTIALS EVALUATORS
• INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION RESEARCH FOUNDATION

Salto de línea And here are the two main associations of credential evaluation agencies:

• National Association of Credential Evaluation Services (NACES)
• Association of International Credentials Evaluators (AICE)