An academic degree is a qualification awarded to a student upon successful completion of a course of study in higher education, usually at a college or university. These institutions often offer degrees at various levels, usually divided into undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. The most common undergraduate degree is the bachelor's degree, although some educational systems offer lower-level undergraduate degrees such as associate and foundation degrees. Common postgraduate degrees include engineer's degrees, master's degrees and doctorates.
National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) are practical work-based awards in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland that are achieved through assessment and training. The regulatory framework supporting NVQs was withdrawn in 2015 and replaced by the Regulated Qualifications Framework (RQF), although the term "NVQ" may be used in RQF qualifications if they "are based on recognised occupational standards, work-based and/or simulated work-based assessment, and where they confer occupational competence".
The Bologna Process is a series of ministerial meetings and agreements between European countries to ensure comparability in the standards and quality of higher-education qualifications. The process has created the European Higher Education Area under the Lisbon Recognition Convention. It is named after the University of Bologna, where the Bologna declaration was signed by education ministers from 29 European countries in 1999. The process was opened to other countries in the European Cultural Convention of the Council of Europe, and government meetings have been held in Prague (2001), Berlin (2003), Bergen (2005), London (2007), Leuven (2009), Budapest-Vienna (2010), Bucharest (2012), Yerevan (2015), Paris (2018), and Rome (2020).
A diploma mill or degree mill is a business that sells illegitimate diplomas or academic degrees, respectively. The term diploma mill is also used pejoratively to describe any educational institution with low standards for admission and graduation, low career placement rate, or low average starting salaries of its graduates.
A postgraduate diploma is a postgraduate qualification at the level of a master's degree, awarded after a university degree, which supplements the original degree and awards them with a graduate diploma. The minimum requirement of completing a Bachelor's degree is necessary to start the Postgraduate course. The duration of a Postgraduate course can vary from 1 year to 2 years.
The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) was launched in March 2010, during the Budapest-Vienna Ministerial Conference, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Bologna Process.
The Lisbon Recognition Convention, officially the Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education in the European Region, is an international convention of the Council of Europe elaborated together with the UNESCO. This is the main legal agreement on credential evaluation in Europe.
The Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) specifies the standards for educational qualifications in Australia. It is administered nationally by the Australian Government's Department of Industry, with oversight from the States and Territories, through the Standing Council of Tertiary Education Skills and Employment. While the AQF specifies the standards, education and training organisations are authorised by accrediting authorities to issue a qualification.
The European Network of Information Centres (ENIC) were established in 1994 as a joint initiative of UNESCO and the Council of Europe. They are intended to implement the Lisbon recognition convention (LRC) and, in general, to develop policy and practice for the recognition of qualifications. The ENIC Network works closely with the NARIC network of the European Union.
Joint Degrees are academic qualifications awarded through integrated curricula often jointly coordinated and delivered by multiple higher education institutions, sometimes across different countries. Graduates may receive a single qualification recognized by multiple national systems, separate qualifications, or a single joint degree certificate. These degrees differ from standard national qualifications by being either multi-system or independent of any single national education system.
Recognition of prior learning (RPL), prior learning assessment (PLA), or prior learning assessment and recognition (PLAR) describes a process used by regulatory bodies, adult learning centres, career development practitioners, military organizations, human resources professionals, employers, training institutions, colleges and universities around the world to evaluate skills and knowledge acquired outside the classroom for the purpose of recognizing competence against a given set of standards, competencies, or learning outcomes. RPL is practiced in many countries for a variety of purposes, for example an individual's standing in a profession, trades qualifications, academic achievement, recruitment, performance management, career and succession planning.
All EU and EEA states and all the associated countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Cyprus have a designated National Academic Recognition Information Centre (NARIC), which provides a way to compare academic qualifications as part of the Bologna Process. Together they form the NARIC network.
The VAE or Validation des Acquis de l'Expérience is a procedure for the recognition of prior learning that allows any French educational institution to grant degrees partly or completely based on work experience. A portfolio of the applicant's achievements and work experience is presented to a committee at the educational institution. The committee will then decide if the documents presented in the portfolio show work that merits partial credit towards a particular degree. The integrity of the vetting procedure is down to individual institutions, however, to produce a false document in support of an application is a felony punished by a large fine and up to three years in jail in France.
The Archimedes Foundation is an independent body established by the Estonian government in 1997 with the objective to coordinate and implement different international and national programmes and projects in the field of training, education, research, technological development and innovation.
Credential evaluation is the way in which academic and professional degrees earned in one country are compared to those earned in another. Universities, colleges and employers around the world use credential evaluations to understand foreign education and to judge applicants for admission or employment.
The national qualification frameworks in the United Kingdom are qualifications frameworks that define and link the levels and credit values of different qualifications.
A qualifications framework is a formalized structure in which learning level descriptors and qualifications are used in order to understand learning outcomes. This allows for the ability to develop, assess and improve quality education in a number of contexts. Qualifications frameworks are typically found at the national, regional, and international level.
Online credentials for learning are digital credentials that are offered in place of traditional paper credentials for a skill or educational achievement. They are directly linked to the accelerated development of internet communication technologies, the development of digital badges, electronic passports and massive open online courses (MOOCs).
