Guides
Each guide states the rule, cites the body that published it, and says when we last checked.
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Cross-border
Which Hong Kong programmes count as sub-degree or post-secondary in 2026?
Which Hong Kong courses count as sub-degree or post-secondary in 2026, and where QF Level 4 draws the line.
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Australia & NZ
Why CRICOS-Registered Courses Matter for Qualification Recognition in Australia (2026)
What CRICOS registration confirms about an Australian course, why it comes before recognition questions, and which national standards apply in 2026.
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Cross-border
Which Degrees Qualify for Hong Kong QMAS in 2026? Eligible University and STEM Data
How Hong Kong's QMAS counts degrees: 4,414 eligible-university master's or doctoral cases in 2025 and 3,541 STEM, plus the 2026 figures.
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Australia & NZ
Which institutions and disciplines qualify for the Subclass 476 visa in 2026?
Subclass 476 eligibility turns on a ministerial instrument: how to check your institution, discipline and completion date against the rules.
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Cross-border
Which Degree Gets You the Hong Kong IANG Visa in 2026? Official Education Data
Hong Kong Immigration Department data shows which degree levels were approved under the non-local graduate route in 2026, and how much of it runs on master's awards.
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Cross-border
QMAS 2026: Which Master's and PhD Degrees Count (and Which STEM Subjects Qualify)
Which master's and doctoral degrees count toward Hong Kong's QMAS in 2026, and how the Hong Kong equivalence standard and STEM list apply.
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Cross-border
Online, Part-Time and Joint Degrees: Do They Count for Hong Kong Talent Visas in 2026?
How Hong Kong's Top Talent Pass and Quality Migrant Admission schemes treat online, part-time and joint degrees, and the awarding-institution rule.
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Cross-border
Hong Kong Top Talent Pass 2026: Is My University on the Eligible List?
Check whether your bachelor’s degree counts for the Hong Kong Top Talent Pass by reverse-engineering the 2026 eligible university list rules.
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Australia & NZ
Skills assessment validity for 491, 494 and 489 in 2026: the 3-year rule and 485 assessments
How long a skills assessment lasts for subclasses 491, 494 and 489, which date counts, and why 485 assessments are rejected.
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Australia & NZ
Which qualifications satisfy the Subclass 462 education requirement in 2026?
Which secondary-school qualifications and equivalents — high school diplomas, the IB, school-leaving documents — satisfy the 462 education rule?
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Australia & NZ
Skills and qualifications for the 482 visa in 2026: when is a skills assessment required?
How subclass 482 skills and qualifications are assessed in 2026: ANZSCO indicative skill levels, core tasks, and when a skills assessment is required.
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Australia & NZ
How is 'closely related' assessed for the 485 Post-Vocational stream in 2026?
How officials decide whether your diploma or trade qualification is closely related to your nominated skilled occupation under clause 485.222.
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Australia & NZ
Does my course meet the Australian study requirement for the 485 visa in 2026?
How to check whether your CRICOS course meets the Australian study requirement for the 485 visa in 2026: 16 months, 92 weeks, English.
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Australia & NZ
Which assessing authority and occupation list apply to subclass 491 in 2026?
Which occupation list and assessing authority apply to subclass 491, plus assessment validity and the 485 pitfall.
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Australia & NZ
494 skills assessment rules in 2026: validity, ANZSCO code and why a 485 assessment fails
Subclass 494 skills assessment rules in 2026: 3-year validity limit, 6-digit ANZSCO match, assessment date before lodging, why a 485 assessment fails.
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Australia & NZ
Why Must an Australian Foundation Program Certificate Say 'Foundation' in 2026?
Explains why Australian foundation program titles and completion certificates must include the word 'Foundation' under the 2021 standards instrument.
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Australia & NZ
What counts as a 'suitable alternative course' under Australia's ESOS Act in 2026?
How ESOS Act s 49(6) delegates 'suitable alternative course' criteria to a ministerial instrument, and how s 5AA defines a course.
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Australia & NZ
The ESOS Framework and University Entry in Australia: what it means in 2026
How Australia’s ESOS legislative framework and institution-led assessment of overseas qualifications apply to university entry in 2026.
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Australia & NZ
If My PhD Was Awarded Years Ago, Am I Still Prominent for Subclass 858 in 2026?
Whether a PhD awarded years ago still supports the 'still prominent' test for Subclass 858, and which recent evidence the official page points to.
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Australia & NZ
Does a PhD From a Top Global University Count as Exceptional Achievement for Subclass 858 in 2026?
A research-based PhD from a top global university may support a Subclass 858 achievement case, but recent prominence and other evidence still matter.
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Cross-border
Recognition of Prior Learning: How Overseas Work Experience Counts Toward a Qualification Gap
Australian law defines course credit and recognition of prior learning as the same thing: exemption from part of a course. Whether your experience can stand in for a qualification depends entirely on which body is assessing you — ACS ignores your degree entirely, NZQA will not accept work experience evidence at all, and Engineers Ireland substitutes 15 years of statements and a 2,500-word report for a degree.
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Cross-border
What Degree Is Required to Become a Teacher: Recognition Routes When Your Training Was Not Local
Four countries, four different answers. Australia counts total years of university study and ignores teaching experience entirely; New Zealand needs an NZQA assessment and cannot assess UK QTS or US state licensure at all; England changed its eligible countries list on 9 September 2026; Ireland registers you and then attaches conditions.
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Australia & NZ
Which study history exempts you from English tests for Australia's Subclass 500 in 2026?
Which study history lets you skip the English test for Australia's Subclass 500 student visa in 2026, and what each route requires.
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Australia & NZ
Which Courses Count as Full-Time Study for Australia's Child Visa 802 in 2026?
Explains what counts as a full-time course for Australia's Child visa (Subclass 802): qualification level, study load and provider registration.
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Australia & NZ
Do You Need a Skills Assessment for Australia Subclass 400 in 2026?
Subclass 400 does not require a skills assessment — see what evidence the Department accepts instead, and where OSCA skill levels 1–3 fit.
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Australia & NZ
What the CRICOS register says about a course level, field and duration in 2026
How Australian course registration records define level, field of study and duration — and what those entries can and cannot tell you.
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Australia & NZ
Does work integrated learning count toward your qualification in Australia in 2026?
How internships, cadetships and placements in Australian courses relate to your qualification, credit, RPL and skills assessment in 2026.
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Transnational awards
Can a Li'an 4+0 degree get a post-study work visa?
Li'an 4+0 graduates usually cannot get a UK, Canada, Australia, NZ, or Hong Kong post-study work visa, because they never hold a student visa abroad; an overseas master's is the route.
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Australia & NZ
Which Course Levels Qualify for Australia Subclass 500? Higher Education vs Postgraduate Research (2026)
How Migration Regulations clause 500.1 defines a higher education course and a postgraduate research course for Australia's Subclass 500 visa.
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Australia & NZ
How long do Australian providers keep unit assessment records in 2026?
Explains the ESOS Act 2000 section 21 rule: unit assessment records must be retained at least 2 years after you cease to be an accepted student.
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Australia & NZ
2026: Picking an Australian degree at a new campus? Check it is registered first
Whether a new Australian campus can enrol you depends on its own registration entry, not the main campus's — here is what to check first.
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Australia & NZ
Does my 2026 online or overseas-delivered course come from a registrable provider?
How ESOS Act 2000 s 16 and the CRICOS register decide whether an online or overseas-delivered course's awarding body can be registered.
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Australia & NZ
How Do Providers Prove a Foundation Program Is Equivalent to Australian Year 12 in 2026?
What evidence a provider must keep to show foundation program subjects are comparable in standard to Australian Year 12, and who checks it.
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Australia & NZ
How to check an Australian course is CRICOS-registered before you enrol in 2026
Match your exact Australian course against the official CRICOS register before you enrol in 2026, and see what registration does and does not cover.
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Australia & NZ
Do Australian foundation programs and ELICOS courses need to meet national standards for study in 2026?
Which standards cover Australian foundation programs and ELICOS in 2026, who enforces them, and how it affects your degree plan.
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Australia & NZ
How are overseas qualifications recognised in Australia in 2026? OQUs and Country Education Profiles
Who compares an overseas degree in Australia in 2026 — OQUs, Country Education Profiles, migration assessing authorities and universities, and what each covers.
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Australia & NZ
Which Australian Jobs Require a Recognised Qualification in 2026?
Answers which Australian jobs need a recognised qualification — starting with vets, engineers and architects — and how an overseas degree is assessed.
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Australia & NZ
How to spot RPL and VET training scams in Australia in 2026
How to tell genuine Recognition of Prior Learning from VET shortcut pitches in Australia in 2026, using official Department of Education warnings.
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Australia & NZ
Australia 190 Visa 2026: CRICOS Course Rule for Australian Qualifications
Using an Australian qualification for a 190 skills assessment? Here's exactly when the course must be CRICOS-registered, and when it isn't required.
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Australia & NZ
190 Points Evidence 2026: Qualifications, Specialist Education and Australian Study
Which documents prove the qualifications, specialist education and Australian study points claimed in your 190 EOI, and what must be true on invitation day.
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Australia & NZ
190 Professional Registration 2026: AHPRA and Legal Admission as Qualification Proof
How full, general or specialist AHPRA registration and state admission replace a 190 skills assessment, and the timing rule that trips applicants up.
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Australia & NZ
190 Skills Assessment After Thapa in 2026: Timing for Qualification Assessments
How the Thapa approach lets a 190 skills assessment be obtained inside the 60-day invitation window, and what that means for qualification assessment timing.
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Australia & NZ
Australia 190 Skills Assessment 2026: Recognised Qualifications and Assessing Authorities
How the subclass 190 skills assessment ties your nominated occupation to its assessing authority, and what your degree has to show to be recognised.
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Australia & NZ
2026: Is the Australian degree you picked registered on CRICOS at that campus?
Registration runs course-by-course and location-by-location, so the same degree title can differ by campus. Here is what to compare before you choose.
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Australia & NZ
Does CRICOS record the campus, not just the course, for my 2026 degree?
CRICOS records a course and the campus it is registered for as a pair. Here is what that means when you choose a 2026 degree.
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Australia & NZ
Australia 190 Points 2026: How Qualifications and Australian Study Add Points
How a degree, Australian study, specialist education and a Professional Year become subclass 190 points — and what each of those claims demands as proof.
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Australia & NZ
What Foundation Program Grades Do Australian Universities Require for Entry in 2026?
How the 2021 Foundation Program Standards require providers to publish aggregate and subject-area entry grades, and why those figures change yearly.
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Australia & NZ
Is My Overseas Qualification Equivalent to Australian Year 11 for Foundation Program Entry in 2026?
How Australian foundation providers must assess an overseas qualification as comparable to Year 11, under the 2021 Standards as at September 2026.
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Australia & NZ
Australian course credit and RPL in 2026: how a shorter course changes your CoE
How course credit and RPL shorten an Australian course, why the CoE covers only the reduced duration, and when PRISMS reporting applies.
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Australia & NZ
Do 2026 ELICOS and Foundation standards affect how my pathway counts toward a degree?
How the ELICOS and Foundation Program Standards are made, who enforces them, and what they do and don't decide about your pathway counting toward a degree.
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Cross-border
Accounting & Finance in QS Subject Rankings 2026: Global Distribution and Top-Tier Indicators
Harvard University holds the top position in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026 for Accounting & Finance. The discipline's global table
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Cross-border
Business & Management Studies in QS Subject Rankings 2026: Global Distribution and Top-Tier Indicators
The QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026 lists 650 institutions worldwide in Business & Management Studies, spanning 67 countries and regions.
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Cross-border
Engineering - Electrical & Electronic in QS Subject Rankings 2026: Global Distribution and Top-Tier Indicators
MIT takes the No. 1 spot in Engineering - Electrical & Electronic in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026, leading a field of 549 ranked i
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Cross-border
Do Employers Rate Australian Graduates? The 2025 ESS Numbers
The 2025 Employer Satisfaction Survey shows 84.2% overall satisfaction with Australian graduates. Technical skills scored 94.0%. Here is how the data works, what it measures, and how to verify it.
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Cross-border
Australia in QS 2027: Rank Distribution and Indicator Gaps
Australia places 37 institutions in the QS World University Rankings 2027, a global edition covering 1,504 universities across 106 countries and terri
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Cross-border
Engineering - Civil & Structural in QS Subject Rankings 2026: Global Distribution and Top-Tier Indicators
The 2026 QS World University Rankings by Subject for Engineering - Civil & Structural covers 277 institutions across 49 countries and territories, wit
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Cross-border
Computer Science & Information Systems in QS Subject Rankings 2026: Global Distribution and Top-Tier Indicators
The QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026 places Computer Science & Information Systems as one of the most competitive disciplines globally, wi
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Cross-border
Data Science and Artificial Intelligence in QS Subject Rankings 2026: Global Distribution and Top-Tier Indicators
The 2026 QS World University Rankings by Subject for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence covers 201 institutions across 37 countries and regions,
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Cross-border
Economics & Econometrics in QS Subject Rankings 2026: Global Distribution and Top-Tier Indicators
The QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026 places Harvard University at the top of Economics & Econometrics, with 699 institutions from 75 count
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Cross-border
Law in QS Subject Rankings 2026: Global Distribution and Top-Tier Indicators
The 2026 QS World University Rankings by Subject place Harvard University at the top of the Law table, with 403 institutions from 61 countries and reg
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Cross-border
United Kingdom in QS 2027: Rank Distribution and Indicator Gaps
The United Kingdom places 93 institutions in the QS World University Rankings 2027, the second-largest national contingent among the 106 countries and
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Australia & NZ
AACA does not measure your architecture degree against the competency standard — it measures it against the Master of Architecture
The National Standard of Competency for Architects is a framework, not an assessment. What the Overseas Qualifications Assessment actually asks is whether your qualification is comparable to an accredited Australian Master of Architecture — and Australia does not accredit bachelor degrees at all.
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Australia & NZ
Social work is self-regulated in Australia, so the AASW list is a membership-eligibility list — and its 'conditional' and 'provisional' labels do not mean what they mean elsewhere
How to read the AASW's accredited social work programs list: why it is not a registration register, what the date after each course name actually records, why the AASW says conditional and provisional accreditation do not affect graduates, and what the field-education hours requirement does to an overseas qualification.
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Australia & NZ
The AASW does not publish outcome categories — it publishes separate letters, a per-criterion verdict, and a set of recommendations that is the actual finding
People search for AASW outcome tiers because other regulators have them. The AASW does not. One application produces up to two different outcome letters with different expiry rules, an unsuccessful outcome is reported criterion by criterion, and the recommendations attached to it are the only published statement of what would fix it.
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Australia & NZ
AASW measures an overseas social work degree against a fixed set of criteria, and the one that fails people most often is field education hours
The AASW publishes its five assessment criteria in full, plus the Australian education standard they are drawn from. Criterion four — at least 1000 hours of field education across at least two placements with contrasting practice foci — is the one with a published floor, a published remedy above that floor, and a published dead end below it.
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Australia & NZ
The AACA's overseas assessment has an eligibility gate before it has an outcome, and three of its own pages do not agree on which countries clear it
What the Overseas Qualifications Assessment actually determines, the home-country rule that disqualifies applications before they are assessed, why a Stage 1 result obtained before March 2022 is now worthless on its own, how long an outcome lasts, and three AACA pages read the same day that name different jurisdictions.
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Australia & NZ
What ACCA, CIMA, CA India and the rest actually buy you in Australia — and why the membership list is not the migration list
CPA Australia publishes 28 professional bodies with membership pathways. None of that list applies to a migration skills assessment. Here is which body recognises which, for which purpose, and the four bodies each one recognises that the other does not.
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Australia & NZ
The accounting competency areas an overseas degree can miss by construction — and the three bodies' three different names for the same nine
CPA Australia, CA ANZ and IPA publish overlapping competency lists under different names and different counts. Two areas are unmissable for most applicants because they are not required at all; one is impossible to hold from an overseas degree by definition.
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Transnational awards
Accountancy exemptions for a transnational degree: one body looks up the awarding body, another asks which country accredited the programme
ACCA says it lists qualifications under the awarding body, not the study centre — and then names the campus you studied at as a factor in what you get. CPA Australia will only accept a programme accredited by the relevant accrediting body in that country, and publishes extra requirements for twinning arrangements. Same degree, two different lookups.
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Australia & NZ
The same body, two different competency lists: an accounting skills assessment is not a step towards membership
CA ANZ publishes one set of competency areas for its migration skills assessment and a different set for entry to the CA Program. CPA Australia retired two foundation exams from the membership path and kept them running for skilled migration. The two assessments are separate products.
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Australia & NZ
Australia accredits the Master of Architecture and nothing below it — the bachelor's degree everyone treats as the accredited qualification is not accredited at all
How Australian architecture accreditation actually works: the one sentence that removes the bachelor's degree from the register, who makes the accreditation decision and who only recommends it, which competency standard applies to which cohort, and what the register cannot tell an overseas degree holder about getting in.
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Australia & NZ
The Australian dental accreditation table has two decision columns, not one — and the one most people read is not the one that lets you register
How to read the ADC's accredited programs table: what each of its nine fields means, why 'accreditation status' and 'DBA status' are two separate legal acts, what the expiry and conditions columns do and do not tell a student, and why an ADC-accredited overseas program still leads to the full examination route.
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Australia & NZ
An occupational therapy program can be accredited, board-approved and fully registrable in Australia while its WFOT approval is still pending — the two are decided by different bodies for different purposes
How to read Australian occupational therapy accreditation: the three-body chain from council to board to professional association, why every new OT program is accredited with conditions by design, what WFOT approval is and is not, and where this page has to leave a blank because the accreditation authority forbids us to read it.
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Australia & NZ
Australia's national teaching list has three columns and none of them is accreditation status — and the shortest program on it is shorter than the standard that governs it appears to allow
How to read the national accredited teacher education list: what its three fields do and do not carry, why the body that publishes it does not accredit anything, the two-year graduate-entry rule and the entries that sit below it, the eighty-and-sixty-day placement requirement, and what a skills assessment does not buy.
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Australia & NZ
The physiotherapy council's list of accredited programs is not the register that matters — and the accreditation period a program gets is decided by a risk table, not by its quality
How Australian physiotherapy accreditation actually reads: why the accrediting body's own list carries no status field, where the register with legal effect lives, the decision framework that sets accreditation periods from four to seven years, why every new program carries conditions, and what the four overseas-qualified pathways cost.
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Australia & NZ
Speech pathology is deliberately left out of Australia's registration scheme — and the accreditation list that replaces it is the only one in Australian health that ties your eligibility to the cohort you were in
How to read the Australian speech pathology accreditation list: the statute that names speech pathologists as health providers while declining to register them, what CPSP certification actually is, the self-regulation standards that govern accreditation status and cohort eligibility, and who you complain to when there is no board.
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Australia & NZ
The ACS register has five columns, two accreditation types and one sentence that ties everything to your commencement year — and ACS's own pages disagree about whether accreditation matters at all
How to read the ACS accredited-courses register: what each of its five fields means, why the accreditation period is a commencement-year rule rather than a validity window, what 'Recognised Internationally' actually flags, and the three ACS statements about accreditation and migration assessment that cannot all be read the same way.
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Australia & NZ
ACS says nothing at all about studying online, and its register has no part-time field — but its campus column shows online delivery is accredited in practice, including one program flagged as not internationally recognised
What ACS actually publishes about mode of study: the silence in its assessment criteria, what the register's campus column does and does not encode, why almost half the accredited master's programs list an online campus, the one thing a fully online row can still cost you, and where the part-time answer has to come from instead.
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Australia & NZ
ACS 'closely related' major versus 'not closely related', occupation by occupation: the two words that are worth four years
ACS reports your qualification as Major, Minor or Insufficient, and then asks whether the units are closely related to your nominated occupation. The same degree at the same level produces a two-year or a six-year experience requirement depending on those two calls.
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Australia & NZ
ACS does not deduct years from your experience. It sets a date, and your qualification decides where the date lands
The published table of how much relevant experience each qualification level requires, plus the Skill Level Requirement Met Date rule and ACS's own two worked examples — including the case where experience predates the degree.
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Australia & NZ
ACS RPL does not bridge a non-ICT degree. It ignores the degree entirely
The question 'which non-ICT degrees can be bridged by experience' has no answer at ACS, because the RPL pathway states it does not assess tertiary qualifications at all. Here is what it asks for instead.
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Australia & NZ
ACS fees and processing times: what each of the four pathways buys, and why there is no published timeframe at all
The ACS Migration Skills Assessment publishes six fees and zero processing times. Here is the fee for each pathway, what each one actually assesses, the free automatic priority rule most people miss, and the three things ACS says it does not do.
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Australia & NZ
What ACS counts as an ICT major is a percentage, and the percentage changes with the qualification type
ACS publishes the actual thresholds — 33% for a standard three-year bachelor, one full academic year for a diploma, 50% for a two-year postgraduate award — plus a separate 65% test that has nothing to do with the major.
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Australia & NZ
Which overseas dental degrees skip the ADC examinations — there is no list of recognised dental schools, there are four categories
The Australian Dental Council publishes no list of recognised overseas dental qualifications. It publishes four situations that lead to a skills assessment instead of exams, and one sentence confirming that even ADC-accredited overseas programs do not exempt their graduates.
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Australia & NZ
The IQNM streams decision table: Stream A, B or C — and the 2025 standard that sits alongside them, not on top of them
The Self-check assigns overseas nurses and midwives to Stream A, B or C. A separate registration standard that took effect on 23 April 2025 adds two streamlined pathways for registered nurses from six named jurisdictions — and the NMBA states the older process 'remains in effect'.
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Australia & NZ
Ahpra's 15 National Boards, 16 professions and the protected titles each controls — and the three acts that are actually restricted
Fifteen boards regulate sixteen professions. Title protection is a criminal offence provision under sections 113–119 of the National Law. But only three health acts are restricted — for every other profession the name is protected and the activity is not.
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Australia & NZ
The bridging-program list for overseas nurses is a closed legacy list — ANMAC accredits, the NMBA approves, and neither publishes the answer most applicants arrive looking for
How Australia's nursing programs-of-study list is actually built and read: the split between ANMAC accreditation and NMBA approval, the five published categories, why the internationally qualified category has been shut to new applicants since early 2020, and the rule that decides what an 'inactive' program is worth.
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Australia & NZ
AITSL's qualification criterion is a total of study years, of which the teaching degree is only one part — and the rest does not have to be teaching at all
AITSL requires a minimum of four years full-time higher education including an initial teacher education qualification of at least one year at bachelor level or above. The other years can be any completed higher education at AQF Level 6 or higher. AITSL will not pre-check whether you meet it, and it publishes no accredited-programs list for migration purposes.
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Australia & NZ
Every international pharmacy program on the APC's list carries conditions by design — and the standards document that governs the assessment is two years behind the exam it names
How to read the Australian Pharmacy Council's accredited degree list: the difference between 'meet' and 'substantially meet', why conditions on an international program mean something structurally different, what the term end date closes, the course-length versus volume-of-learning trap, and the standards changeover that will move the goalposts.
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Australia & NZ
APC measures an overseas pharmacy degree on two things only: where it was awarded and how long it was
Almost everything written about becoming a pharmacist in Australia is about the exams. The step before them decides which exam you sit, and it turns on the country of qualification plus a full-time-equivalent length test with a cut-off year. There is no module-by-module gap analysis and no top-up route.
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UK & Ireland
ARB Prescribed Examination or a UK Part 1 degree: the two routes costed side by side, from the fee pages themselves
A route-cost comparison only — no exam content. What each path charges, how long each takes, what entry each demands, and the item both paths still require that most comparisons leave out.
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UK & Ireland
ARB's UK Adaptation Assessment: who is actually eligible, who is not, and why it is not an alternative to Part 3
The UKAA is open only to architects arriving through a registration-level mutual recognition agreement, and eligibility is decided by the partner regulator rather than by ARB. It is also being withdrawn after October 2026.
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UK & Ireland
The ARB Prescribed Examination is still running — but the Part 1 exam ends this October, and the application window has already closed
What ARB has actually published about the Prescribed Examination in 2026: which part is being discontinued, when the last sittings are, what is still only a consultation, and where ARB's own pages contradict each other.
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Australia & NZ
AQF levels 1–10 and the overseas qualification names people actually hold: what maps, what does not, and why nobody will publish the mapping
The AQF's ten levels and every qualification type sitting on them, in the AQF's own words — plus the five structural traps that make an overseas award's name a poor predictor of where it lands, and the one document that decides it, which you are not meant to read.
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UK & Ireland
UK Part 2 architecture courses and the overseas first degree: 'we will admit you' and 'you will be able to register' are two different sentences
Seventeen UK schools publish their Part 2 entry rules three different ways. Some require an ARB Prescribed Part 1 before you can enrol, some admit you without Part 1 and warn you in writing that you still cannot register, and some say nothing at all. This page explains how to read the sentence, and who actually decides.
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UK & Ireland
ARB's Schedule 1 now runs two frameworks with opposite date rules — one locks on the day you graduate, the other on the day you start
The Architects Registration Board's list of accredited qualifications states two rules in two consecutive sentences, and they anchor to different dates. Add 145 entries whose original date range has already expired but which carry an extension line, and Schedule 1 becomes the hardest architecture register in these islands to read correctly. This page explains every field.
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UK & Ireland
ARB or RIAI: what the UK and Irish architect registers actually ask an overseas-qualified applicant for
The two registers test different things. ARB routes an unrecognised overseas qualification to its own examination and then a UK Part 3; the RIAI routes it to an experience-and-interview assessment on a fixed twice-yearly cycle. Different evidence, different money, different calendars — and a memorandum linking the two.
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Australia & NZ
How long each AU and NZ assessment outcome stays valid: two years, three years, five years, seven years — and one that never expires
Eight authorities, eight different clocks, and three different rules about whether a renewal restarts them. The expensive mistakes are the ones where two clocks on the same file run out at different times.
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Australia & NZ
A Skills Assessment, a Registration and a University Admission Are Three Separate Decisions
Three different bodies decide them, under three different rulebooks, and none of the three is bound by the other two — set out in the words the bodies themselves publish.
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Australia & NZ
Australian programs that deliver the Priestley 11 for overseas law graduates: two are built for exactly this, and the rest are whole degrees
You cannot choose a programme until an admitting authority has told you which subjects you need. Once it has, two Australian awards let you take only those subjects — and the rest of the market sells you a full Juris Doctor.
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Transnational awards
Why study at an offshore campus does not meet the Australian study requirement: five conditions, and the two that turn on where you were
Regulation 1.15F is short, and two of its five conditions are about physical presence and Australian course registration. Neither can be satisfied by an award, however the certificate reads.
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Australia & NZ
Australia's eight teacher registration boards compared: same four-year rule, eight different English tests, and one board that accepts an AITSL assessment
VIT, NESA, QCT, TRBWA, TRB SA, TRB Tas, TQI and TRB NT all require four years of higher education including one year of initial teacher education. Everything after that — the English test, its validity window, and the days you must teach to reach full registration — differs by state.
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Transnational awards
"Awarded by" and "taught by": the two names behind your degree, and which one each body follows
Teaching can be delegated; awarding cannot. That single rule decides whose transcript an evaluator will accept, whose register your programme appears in, and which name to put on a form.
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UK & Ireland
'Stage 2' is used everywhere in UK psychology training and defined nowhere official — what the BPS actually publishes, and what it never says about international entry
The BPS attaches a Stage 2 label to five of its own qualifications and not to two others, has no independent route in clinical psychology at all, and publishes no definition of the term. This page sets out what the register really distinguishes, the one condition that binds overseas applicants on the independent route, and the question the BPS is silent on.
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UK & Ireland
Reading the BPS accredited conversion course register: the intake-year rule, the pathway condition on the results page, and the two credit sizes with different entry rules
A BPS-accredited conversion course confers eligibility for Graduate Basis for Chartered Membership only if four conditions hold, and only one of them is the accreditation flag. This page explains what the register answers, what the search results page adds, why 120-credit and 180-credit conversions have different entry rules, and what the BPS does not publish.
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UK & Ireland
BPS or PSI conversion course: the two societies already recognise each other, so the real differences are entry, price and what each one publishes
A memorandum of cooperation means a BPS-accredited conversion degree earns PSI Graduate Membership and a PSI-accredited award earns BPS Graduate Basis for Chartered Membership — both societies say so on their own pages. What actually differs is the entry rule, the non-EU and international fee, how openly each register is published, and what happens at the doctorate stage.
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Transnational awards
What an Australian points assessment does with a branch-campus degree: three items in one table, three different tests
Australia's points schedule scores a qualification three separate ways — on level, on where you physically studied, and on what an assessing authority decided. A transnational award can pass one and fail another, by design.
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Transnational awards
Is a branch campus degree the same as the main campus degree? What is identical, and what was never the same thing
The award can be genuinely identical and still be treated differently, because the bodies that judge it read facts the certificate does not carry. This separates the three questions people ask at once.
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Transnational awards
How to check a branch-campus medical school in the World Directory — and why the listing is the least informative thing on the page
The World Directory says in terms that listing does not denote recognition, accreditation or endorsement by anyone. The tab that carries operative information is Sponsor Notes, and what it records turns on the host country's government authority and on graduation years. Here is how to run the check yourself.
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Transnational awards
Branch campus vs main campus, line by line: entry, staff, assessment, testamur, transcript, register
A checkable item-by-item comparison, with the published rule behind each item — including what the standards require a certificate to state, and the one item that is genuinely unresolved.
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Australia & NZ
Which VETASSESS occupation a generic business degree actually satisfies — and the one that says general business qualifications are not relevant
A Bachelor of Business is a highly relevant major for some VETASSESS occupations, an argument for others, and expressly not relevant for at least one. Here is what the occupation criteria say, in VETASSESS's own words, and how to read a page that lists no majors at all.
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Canada & US
When the institution is gone: what Canada's designated ECA bodies actually publish about records that cannot be produced
Canada's own national framework publishes a recommended alternative procedure for applicants who cannot obtain verifiable documents, and names institutional closure as a qualifying reason. Four of the five designated organisations publish no such route for an immigration ECA. One says in writing: 'There are no exceptions made for a closed institution.' Read on 3 September 2026.
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Canada & US
"You don't need an assessment for a Canadian degree, diploma or certificate" — IRCC's sentence, and the five places it still is not the end of it
The answer is a plain no, published by IRCC and repeated by a designated body that has no commercial reason to say it. But a Canadian credential still earns nothing automatically, a foreign one you also hold still needs its own report, a spouse's does too, one agency refuses to assess Canadian credentials at all, and no assessment licenses anyone.
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Canada & US
Who IRCC designates for an ECA: five multipurpose organisations, three professional bodies, and the parts every summary leaves out
The five-name list that circulates online is real but incomplete. IRCC also designates three professional bodies whose reports are compulsory for three occupations, restricts what two of them will report, and keeps one list closed and the other open. Read on 3 September 2026 from IRCC's own pages.
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Canada & US
Five years from the date of issue: what each designated body does when your ECA runs out
IRCC applies the five-year rule twice, and refuses applications filed with an expired report. What happens next is not one process: one agency renews only after expiry, one warns the renewed outcome may change, one charges a reactivation fee, and one tells you to re-apply in full. Read from each body's own pages on 3 September 2026.
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Canada & US
A degree awarded in one country and taught in another: how Canadian ECA rules actually handle it
No designated agency publishes a general transnational-education policy. What they publish instead are three separate tests — who awarded it, who recognises the awarding body, and who recognises the teaching institution and the programme — and those three can point at different countries.
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Canada & US
WES Basic versus ICAP on the Canadian pages: the choice does not exist for an ECA, and where it does the published feature lists are identical
On WES's Canadian ECA path there is one package and no ICAP upsell — transcript storage is already listed inside it. On the general paths ICAP costs more than Basic, but the two published feature lists we read on 3 September 2026 are word-for-word the same. Here is every stated difference we could actually find.
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Canada & US
Immigration, a province, a regulator or a university: which report each one asks for, in the agencies' own words
IRCC's page opens with a sentence most people skip: "There are different types of ECAs. You need to get an ECA for immigration purposes." Every designated agency sells at least two report types, they disagree with each other about what the immigration one may be used for, and converting between them costs money. Read on 3 September 2026.
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Canada & US
One-year versus two-year credentials in the Express Entry education rules, as IRCC writes them
Two one-year credentials never reach the 'two or more' row — every combination entry in IRCC's own 152-row table begins with a credential of three years or more. And the Canadian bonus splits at one-or-two years versus three, with a separate rule for a one-year master's.
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Canada & US
Top-up, second bachelor's, or a Canadian master's: what each one actually changes in the published rules
Three routes people take after an ECA result they did not want. Each one lands in a different place in IRCC's rules: a further foreign credential needs its own assessment and only helps through a specific combination row; a Canadian credential is assessed by nobody but must survive five conditions; and a Canadian master's is gated by an admissions decision no immigration rule controls.
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Canada & US
What counts as "Canadian education" for Express Entry points — the five conditions, quoted from the instrument that sets them
The 15 or 30 extra points for post-secondary education in Canada are governed by section 30 of the Ministerial Instructions, not by any college's marketing page. It sets an institution test, an eight-month full-time test, a physical-presence test, and three categories of credential that are excluded outright — including any programme that is more than half distance learning.
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Canada & US
Why two designated ECA agencies can report the same credential differently — the answer is in their own published rules
Canada designates five general organisations plus three professional bodies to assess foreign credentials, and the framework they all follow says in writing that it is 'not prescriptive'. Different results are a documented feature of the system, not a rumour.
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Canada & US
Your ECA says "Bachelor's degree (three years)" — what IRCC's own table attaches to that phrase, and what it doesn't
IRCC publishes a 152-row table mapping every possible ECA result to a level of education and a point value. A three-year bachelor's and a four-year bachelor's are separate rows that map to the same level of education, for the same points. Here is what that does, and the four decisions it still does not touch.
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UK & Ireland
Academic shortfall for CEng: further learning or individual assessment, what each one demands, and who actually decides
The Engineering Council defines further learning and leaves the choice of product entirely to the licensed institution. IMechE publishes five ways to do it, ICE publishes two assessment routes instead, and neither the Council nor we can tell you that a named master's will close your gap.
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UK & Ireland
Accredited in which year? A conversion course's accreditation dates, not its reputation, decide whether your cohort counts
BPS accreditation attaches to an intake cohort, not to a course name. Its own register records a start year, sometimes a discontinued year, and a sentence that does not always agree with the status field. This is how to read it, and what the accreditor's terms say happens to students already enrolled.
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UK & Ireland
Psychology conversion MSc or a second undergraduate degree: the BPS accredits both, and both end in the same eligibility
A BPS-accredited conversion course and a BPS-accredited undergraduate psychology degree confer the identical outcome — Graduate Basis for Chartered Membership. What differs is length, entry conditions and total fees, and at one university the published international fees differ by a factor of nearly three.
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UK & Ireland
Finding a CORU period of adaptation placement: CORU does not arrange it, and the site can say no
The period of adaptation is a supervised post in Ireland that you have to find yourself. CORU publishes who may supervise, what must be signed before you start, the attendance rule, and the four report templates — but it publishes no list of sites and no placement service.
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UK & Ireland
How to read CORU's approved qualifications lists: approval attaches to an award title and an awarding body, not to a college — and a course taught in Dublin can still be an international application
CORU's approved qualifications are listed per profession as award title plus awarding body, which is why the same university appears under several legal names and why two programmes at the same Irish college can lead to two different registration routes. This page explains what each entry commits CORU to, and the three traps in reading one.
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UK & Ireland
Which CORU board covers your profession — and why five professions have no open register, so no recognition process to apply to
CORU's registers opened profession by profession and the phasing is not finished. A Registration Board only becomes the Competent Authority for a profession on the day that profession's register opens. CORU's own pages give three different counts of how many boards exist.
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UK & Ireland
CORU found substantial differences in your qualification: the choice between an adaptation period and an aptitude test — and who does not get a choice
CORU's published policy gives EU-Directive applicants the right to choose between a period of adaptation and an aptitude test. For non-EU applicants it says a compensation measure 'may' be offered and 'is not mandatory'. That one word is the difference between a route and a refusal.
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Australia & NZ
Australia's Official Qualification-Comparison Database Is Paywalled and Not Meant for You — Here Is What Is Free
The Country Education Profiles are sold by subscription and their publisher says they are not intended for individuals. This is the inventory of official Australian and New Zealand sources an individual can actually read for nothing.
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UK & Ireland
CORU and the HCPC assess the same overseas degree against different rules — including which professions each one regulates at all
Both regulators measure you against something called Standards of Proficiency, and there the similarity ends. The lists of professions barely overlap, only one has a hard statutory clock, and the route back from a shortfall is a different mechanism with different eligibility in each country.
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Transnational awards
Singapore's private-school registration and EduTrust: what each one certifies, and the sentence the regulator uses to say what neither does
Registration is compulsory and covers the school. EduTrust is voluntary and covers the school's processes. Neither is a statement about your qualification — and Singapore's regulator says so in a single published sentence.
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Australia & NZ
Two accounting bodies accredit Australian degrees against one jointly written standard, and they differ on exactly one competency area — the confusion everywhere else comes from a second, unrelated framework
How Australian accounting accreditation actually works: the eight required competency areas and the single divergence between the two bodies, why the migration assessment uses a different and shorter list, where the widely repeated nine-area claim comes from, the reaccreditation cycle, and why an accredited degree does not settle a migration outcome.
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Australia & NZ
Your degree is not recognised in Australia: which professions publish a study route, and which publish an exam instead
Across eleven Australian assessing authorities, study is the published remedy in accounting and almost nowhere else. Everywhere else the answer is an exam, a portfolio, or nothing at all — profession by profession, with each body's own words.
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Australia & NZ
Two of Australia's health accreditation standards set no minimum placement hours at all, and the one profession that does publish a hard number also publishes the only rule about doing it in Australia
What actually forces a placement into an Australian degree: the outcomes-based standards that decline to specify hours, the observed range one council publishes instead, the eighty-and-sixty-day teaching rule and its 'mostly in Australia' condition, the hours universities state on their own pages, and why a post-degree professional year is a different thing entirely.
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UK & Ireland
Do you actually need a UK ENIC statement? The cases where the decision-maker does its own assessment
ENIC says the final decision belongs to the employer or institution, and several of the bodies people buy a statement for never ask for one. Here is how to work out whether yours is one of them before you pay.
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Australia & NZ
What each AU/NZ authority requires your university to send — and the four document rules that decide more applications than the criteria do
Award certificate, transcript, syllabus, statement of service, payment evidence, organisational chart. Which authority wants which, who must issue it, and the country-specific rules that only appear in one paragraph on one page.
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Transnational awards
Does studying at a branch campus count as "studying overseas"? There is no single definition, and the ones that exist do not agree
"Studying overseas" is not a general term with one meaning. Each rule that uses it defines it for itself, and the published definitions test different things — the awarding body, the campus, or where your body was.
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Australia & NZ
Two accreditations on one Australian degree do not compose — a university that grants you credit can leave the degree accredited while your own enrolment stops satisfying it
How dual accreditation actually attaches: to a major or a specialisation rather than to a degree, the credit-transfer warning one university publishes in full, the pairings that genuinely co-accredit one program, the accreditation-plus-board-approval pair that is not dual accreditation at all, and the questions to ask before enrolling.
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Transnational awards
Dual, joint, double: how many qualifications you end up holding, and whose signature is on each
The words are used interchangeably in marketing and mean different things in the rules. What separates them is arithmetic — one certificate naming two universities, or two certificates naming one each — and that count decides how many registers you appear in and how many assessments you pay for.
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Australia & NZ
Two Australian universities run an accredited professional engineering master's for people without an accredited engineering degree, and their entry rules are not the same — one takes a non-engineering bachelor's, the other does not
What an accredited Master of Professional Engineering is for, the Accord jurisdiction clause that decides whether an overseas degree counts, the difference between a course-conversion master's and an extension master's, why provisional accreditation appears so often on these programmes, and the twelve-week experience requirement both universities attribute to the accrediting body.
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Australia & NZ
'Not accredited' at Engineers Australia is a routing decision, not a rejection — and the route it sends you down does not look at your degree at all
Engineers Australia defines a non-accredited qualification as one not recognised under the Washington, Sydney or Dublin Accords, and states plainly that such a qualification is 'not approved or recognised by Engineers Australia'. What follows from that sentence is a different assessment pathway, not a verdict on your education — and EA publishes no study remedy for it.
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Australia & NZ
In Australian law an enabling course and a bridging course are opposite ends of a career, and neither one is a qualification — the statute defines both and excludes both from the framework
The statutory definitions of an enabling course and a bridging course for overseas-trained professionals, why an enabling course confers no award and sits outside the qualifications framework, the fee rule that makes one of them free for some students and not others, what a foundation program is regulated as instead, and why no regulator accredits any of them.
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Transnational awards
Whose transcript does a Canadian ECA want for a degree taught in one country and awarded in another? The answer changes with the country you enter
We ran one assessor's document tool four times with the same credential and changed only the country. For Malaysia, Singapore and the UAE it asked for a transcript from the institution you attended; for the United Kingdom, from the institution that awarded your degree. Those are different organisations, and a separate evaluator will accept documents from only one of them.
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UK & Ireland
How to read the Engineering Council course search: the four fields that decide whether your degree is a full CEng academic base
The Engineering Council's course search is indexed by the year you started, not the year you graduated, and 'accredited' on its own settles nothing. This page explains what each field means, which one is decisive, and the five ways the record can say something other than what you think it says.
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Australia & NZ
Engineering New Zealand does not ask whether your degree is recognised — it asks which Accord it maps to, and there is a fourth answer
A credential check returns Washington, Sydney, Dublin or 'no equivalence'. The Accord decides which Chartered class you can apply for, not whether you can join. Non-Accord graduates have a published route, and it is an assessment rather than a course.
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Australia & NZ
Engineering New Zealand's accreditation lists carry a start year for a reason, and the body that publishes them says on its own site that engineering is not a regulated occupation there
How to read the three New Zealand engineering accreditation lists: what the 'Accredited From' and 'Next Scheduled Review' columns mean, how a closed date range works, why provisional accreditation can lapse, why accreditation and Accord recognition are not the same thing for offshore programmes, and what the credential check costs a non-Accord graduate.
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UK & Ireland
Reading the Engineers Ireland accreditation database: the standard, the two notes, and the 2005 renaming that makes old awards look like the wrong level
An Engineers Ireland record answers one question — which of three education standards the programme was accredited at — and two notes qualify it. This page explains the standards, the FL and M notes, the pre-2005 award names that no longer mean what they say, and where the register actually lives, because the URL you would guess serves a placeholder page.
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Australia & NZ
English language test requirements, regulator by regulator (Australia and New Zealand): five different bars, and one set of scores that changed on 23 April 2026
Ahpra's shared standard covers 13 health professions and has four pathways, not five. Teacher boards, assessing authorities and New Zealand each set their own numbers. A single sitting can satisfy one regulator and fail another by half a band.
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UK & Ireland
Chartered Engineer in Ireland with an unaccredited overseas degree: the route is called Experiential Learning, and a board approves you before you may apply properly
Engineers Ireland publishes three routes to Chartered Engineer. The one for a degree that is not accredited and not covered by the Washington Accord is the Experiential Learning Route, which begins with an Initial Assessment reviewed by the Membership and Qualifications Board and sets experience floors of eight, ten or fifteen years.
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UK & Ireland
UK ENIC revised how it compares Indian Bachelor degrees — what the statement says now, and what India's own framework says
ENIC moved from a subject-based split to a duration-based one, so an Indian three-year Bachelor is compared to a UK Bachelor degree and a four-year one to a UK Bachelor (Honours). ENIC published no award-year cut-off for the change, and says degrees compared to 'Bachelor degree' may still suit UK postgraduate study, at institutional discretion.
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UK & Ireland
A UK ENIC statement is not professional recognition — here is what regulators actually do with one
ENIC says its statements are not legal documents and that the final decision belongs to the employer or institution. Read against the regulators' own document lists today, an ENIC statement is required by one, discretionary for another, and absent from the paperwork of two more.
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Australia & NZ
Whether an overseas nursing qualification maps to enrolled nurse or registered nurse is decided by academic level, and your country may not get a choice
NMBA sets a different minimum AQF level for each division, and a different stream cut-off underneath it. It also has a rule that overrides both: where a country has only one level of nurse registration, the qualification is assessed at registered nurse level whether that helps or not.
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UK & Ireland
Your UK ENIC statement came back lower than you expected: the reassessment route, the complaint route, and what actually changes a comparison
ENIC publishes a reassessment route and a separate complaints route, each with its own deadline and its own acknowledgement time, and it guarantees neither a reassessment nor a different outcome. Before using either, check whether the statement says what you think it says.
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Transnational awards
Branch campus, franchised, validated, twinned, joint: the five modes sorted by who teaches and who awards
Every transnational arrangement answers two questions — who teaches you, and who awards the degree. Five common combinations, each with the regulator's own words, and how to tell which one your offer letter describes.
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UK & Ireland
'Further learning' means two opposite things in the UK and Irish engineering registers — how to read the flag before you buy the MSc
In the Engineering Council's database, 'further learning' tags the top-up master's. In the Engineers Ireland database, the FL note tags the bachelor's that needs one — and it is keyed to your graduation date, not your intake year. This page explains how to read a further-learning record in each system and what the flag does not promise.
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UK & Ireland
The GDC's list of recognised overseas dental qualifications is closed: nothing awarded after 2000 is on it
Every entry on the GDC's recognised overseas qualifications list is capped at an award date in the 1990s or 2000, from fourteen universities in six countries. For everyone who qualified since, the list is not the question. This page explains what the list is, why 'recognised' and 'approved' are different words at the GDC, and what the alternative routes actually cost in money and time.
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Transnational awards
Going home with a TNE degree: three governments have written the rule down, and one of them excludes a whole delivery model by name
India's 2025 equivalence regulations bar franchised qualifications outright and impose a two-country approval test on offshore campuses. Pakistan's 2024 policy restricts which foreign institutions may deliver at all, and caps franchised delivery by level. Nigeria requires overseas residence before a foreign award can be conferred. The rules exist, in writing, and none of them matches the brochure.
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UK & Ireland
The GMC has no list of approved universities — it says so, and here is what it publishes instead
In its own words the GMC does not endorse or accredit overseas medical education, there is no list of acceptable qualifications, and acceptance for one applicant does not mean acceptance for another. What it does publish is two lists of exclusions, a set of criteria, and a warning about anyone who tells you otherwise.
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Australia & NZ
Graduate Diploma of Education or Master of Teaching: what the national accreditation standard actually fixes
The choice most people think they are making — one year versus two — does not exist inside the national standard. AITSL's Program Standard sets a two-year full-time-equivalent floor for the professional studies component, and its national list of accredited programs reflects that. Counted from AITSL's own list on 3 September 2026.
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UK & Ireland
Graduate Basis for Chartered Membership: an academic standard, not a licence — what GBC is, what it is not, and what has to come after it
GBC is the BPS's confirmation that your psychology education reached a defined standard. It is not registration, it does not let you call yourself a psychologist, and on its own it qualifies you for nothing except entry to the next stage of training.
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Australia & NZ
Closing the same ICT gap with a graduate diploma or a master's: what ACS measures, and what the extra year buys
ACS puts graduate diplomas and master's degrees in the same sentence and applies the same test to both — but it also publishes minimum duration and unit thresholds for Australian postgraduate qualifications that some graduate diplomas sit below. Rules and course figures read from the source pages on 3 September 2026.
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Australia & NZ
Graduate-entry pre-registration Master of Nursing programs in Australia: five verified, two years each, and three different ways of describing the same accreditation
If you hold a non-nursing bachelor's degree, a two-year graduate-entry master's is the shortest accredited route to registration as a nurse in Australia. Here are five that exist, what each one requires, and why their accreditation wording differs so much.
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UK & Ireland
HCPC's 'supervised practice and/or academic training' is real — and most international applicants are not eligible for it
The sentence about making up a shortfall with supervised practice or study belongs to periods of adaptation, and HCPC restricts those to applicants with European mutual-recognition rights. For everyone else on the international route the outcomes are pass, test of competence, or refusal. There is no 'go away and study' option.
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UK & Ireland
Reading the HCPC approved programmes register: it hides closed programmes by default, its Region field is the provider's region, and only some professions have a master's route at all
The HCPC publishes which professions a pre-registration master's can lead to, in a standard most applicants never open. This page sets out those professions, explains the six search facets and the nine record fields, and names the three ways the register misleads people — starting with the filter that is already applied before you touch it.
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UK & Ireland
Most HCPC professions have no top-up route at all — what HCPC's own register of approved programmes actually shows
HCPC registers 15 professions. Its register of approved programmes contains exactly one route designed to take a non-approved degree and add to it: the IBMS Certificate of Competence for biomedical scientists. Two other professions have professional-body programmes that do something different. For the rest, there is no top-up, and no page anywhere says so.
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UK & Ireland
HCPC's one-round assessment, live since 20 November 2025: there is no second chance to send evidence
HCPC now assesses an international application in a single documentary round. If the evidence for a standard is not in the file you submit, you are referred to a test of competence or refused — you are not asked for more. What changed, what did not, and where HCPC's own documents still disagree.
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UK & Ireland
Where UK supervised practice for HCPC applicants comes from — and why nobody, including HCPC, publishes a list of providers
HCPC requires a period of adaptation to be arranged by the applicant, approved in advance, and supervised by a registrant — then states that it does not approve or endorse any placement or course and cannot help you find one. This is what that means in practice, and what you can actually do with the approval form.
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Transnational awards
How a hiring company actually verifies a franchised or branch-campus degree
Background checks do not write to the campus that taught you. They query the institution that conferred the award — and the UK's official hub returns your place of study as one of the fields. That combination decides which name belongs on your CV and which document you will be asked to produce.
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Transnational awards
How to find out, before you enrol, whether a programme is franchised: the paper trail that already exists
No regulator publishes a delivery-mode field, so you cannot look this up in one place. You can settle it from documents that already exist — the written agreement, the register entries on both sides, the awarding body's own confirmation, and a specimen certificate and transcript. Here is exactly what to ask for and what each answer proves.
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Transnational awards
How to check a Malaysian qualification on the MQR — and the things the register was never built to tell you
The Malaysian Qualifications Register is a real, free, public lookup, and it answers a narrower question than most people think. Where to search, what a record contains, and the exclusions the register states about itself.
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UK & Ireland
Your IBMS degree assessment says 'supplementary education required'. Here is what that letter commits you to — and the expiry date on it that nobody mentions
The IBMS outcome letter names subject areas, not modules. It does not name a university, IBMS will not recommend one, and it expires after five years. The appeal window is eight weeks and you get one attempt. This is what the letter means and what has to happen next.
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UK & Ireland
India, Nigeria and Pakistan lawyers: the SRA's exemption list covers SQE2 only — SQE1 is still required
The SRA's own jurisdiction data shows an SQE2 exemption route for Indian advocates, Nigerian barristers and solicitors, and advocates in six Pakistani jurisdictions. It shows no SQE1 exemption for any of them, and the SRA says only one SQE1 exemption has been granted since 2021.
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UK & Ireland
IEng or CEng: the accord your degree was accredited under answers this, and the July rule that catches everyone who assumes Washington is enough
The Engineering Council maps the three international accords onto its three titles in one sentence. Washington points at CEng, Sydney at IEng, Dublin at EngTech. But a Washington Accord programme started after a certain month in 2015 no longer closes the CEng academic base on its own, and the Council says so on the same page.
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Australia & NZ
A three-year Indian BCA or B.Sc (IT) under ACS: the three-year length is not the problem people think it is
ACS's published major test is written for a standard three-year bachelor. What ACS does not publish is a country table — the AQF comparability reference it names in its own glossary is a paid subscription that its publisher says is not for individuals.
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UK & Ireland
IBMS top-up modules, a full UK MSc, or starting a BSc again: what each route costs and, more importantly, what each one actually gets you
Only one of these three routes closes an academic gap for HCPC registration as a biomedical scientist. IBMS states that an accredited MSc does not override a non-accredited BSc. Here are published module and course fees for 2026/27, read from the universities' own pages, and the rule that decides which route is even open to you.
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UK & Ireland
ARB says an interior architecture degree is 'unlikely' to qualify you for its exam — here is the test it actually applies, and what does work
The escape clause on ARB's page points to transitional arrangements that only cover courses started before October 2013. This sets out the real eligibility test from ARB's Procedures, and the routes that remain open to interior architecture, interior design and architectural technology graduates.
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Australia & NZ
The intern year is the longest step for an overseas pharmacist, and the hours in the registration standard are not the hours currently required
Passing APC's exam does not make you a pharmacist in Australia — it makes you eligible to apply for provisional registration and start supervised practice. The Pharmacy Board's standard sets one figure; a variation made in 2020 and still in force sets a lower one. Which stream you came through changes almost everything about this stage.
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UK & Ireland
Engineers Ireland names an MBA as possible further learning for Chartered Engineer — the UK guidance we read names no non-engineering master's at all
Ireland's Further Learning Route guidelines list 'a Master's degree in another subject area (e.g. Master of Business Administration (MBA), Project Management)' among ways to reach master's equivalence. The Engineering Council and IMechE describe further learning differently, and neither names a business qualification.
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UK & Ireland
The History and Structure of the Irish Education System condition: every overseas-qualified post-primary teacher gets it, and there are two ways to clear it
The Teaching Council applies this condition to all applicants who qualified outside the Republic of Ireland as post-primary teachers — not to some of them. You can clear it by the Council's own online examination, three sittings a year with 130 places each, or by a module at one of eight named Irish institutions.
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UK & Ireland
How to tell the official Irish NARIC source from anything else — the address people remember no longer resolves
NARIC Ireland is hosted inside QQI, and the only reliable way to reach it is from qqi.ie. The domain most guides still print, naricireland.ie, returned NXDOMAIN when we queried it. Four checks that work regardless of what a search result claims.
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UK & Ireland
Irish NARIC comparability statements cost nothing — what you get for free, and the four things the free document cannot do
QQI hosts NARIC Ireland and publishes comparability statements as free downloads from a searchable database. There is no application, no assessment of your documents and no fee. That is also exactly why the statement is limited in the four specific ways set out here.
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UK & Ireland
Ireland's Preliminary Examination is for people without a degree — if you hold an overseas degree you apply for an exemption instead
A widespread misreading says the Preliminary Examination is the route for anyone whose degree is not Irish or British. The Law Society's own pages say otherwise: it is the entry route for people who do not hold a Level 7 degree at all, and overseas graduates apply for a €80 exemption from it.
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UK & Ireland
An Irish NARIC comparability statement does not register you — and QQI says so on the same page it gives you the statement
The free download tells a reader what your qualification broadly compares to on the Irish framework. It is generic, it is not a legal document, and QQI states outright that it does not comment on regulated professions. Which Irish body actually decides, profession by profession.
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Cross-border
When the licence says open and the terms say no: reading an open licence to its edges
One qualifications authority grants a Creative Commons licence over its site, then carves out the qualification data itself, then requires permission for commercial use — all on a single page. The lesson generalises: an open licence is only as wide as its exceptions.
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Australia & NZ
For a Commonwealth supported place the price of an Australian professional degree is set by legislated discipline band, not by the university — so for domestic students the cheapest-university question has no answer
Why a lowest-fee table across the regulated professions cannot be built honestly: the government-set student contribution bands, the three different prices attached to one seat, the per-year versus per-unit versus per-course problem, the indicative-and-escalating totals, and what we could and could not read off official pages.
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Transnational awards
Malaysian public-sector recognition changed hands in 2017 — and the register most people still check stopped being updated that year
The committee that decided which qualifications the Malaysian government recognised was dissolved at the end of 2016. What replaced it is a different object with a different scope, a different lookup and a different failure mode — and for a foreign award taught locally, an extra condition about when the awarding institution was accredited.
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Australia & NZ
A Master of Professional Accounting shortened by credit for prior study can satisfy one assessing authority and be rejected outright by another — one of them requires the full unit count with no exemptions
What the three Australian accounting authorities actually require of a conversion master's: the eight accreditation competency areas, the eight-unit postgraduate rule, the full-programme-without-exemptions rule, the advanced-standing question the accrediting bodies decline to regulate, and why no honest list of qualifying programs can be published.
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Transnational awards
Provisional, full, self-accrediting: what each MQA status means for the certificate you end up holding
Three different things get called 'MQA accredited'. They sit on separate registers, rest on different sections of the Act, and one of them is normal for a programme that has not yet graduated anyone.
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Australia & NZ
New Zealand's accredited pharmacy degrees: there are now three, and the third one changed who the answer is for
The long-standing answer was two Bachelor of Pharmacy degrees, at Auckland and Otago. A graduate-entry Master of Pharmacy Practice at Waikato is now a prescribed qualification alongside them — which matters most to people who already hold a bachelor's degree. Read from the Council's own pages and its Gazette notice on 3 September 2026.
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UK & Ireland
Your medical school is not on the World Directory: the two exceptions the GMC names, and the mismatch problem that is more common than absence
The GMC requires a World Directory entry, and names exactly two situations in which it may accept a qualification without one. It also requires your degree title, duration, awarding body and affiliations to match that entry — which is where most people's problem actually is.
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UK & Ireland
Ireland's NFQ levels, read for someone holding an overseas degree — and the Level 7 / Level 8 line that decides most Irish applications
The Irish framework has ten levels, and two of them carry almost all the weight for an overseas applicant. Level 7 is an Ordinary Bachelor Degree, Level 8 an Honours Bachelor Degree, and Irish regulators write their entry rules against one or the other by name.
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Australia & NZ
A Nigerian HND or a three-year bachelor under VETASSESS: what is published, what is behind a paywall, and why the group letter decides more than the degree does
VETASSESS names the reference it uses to place an overseas qualification on the AQF. That reference is a paid subscription whose publisher says it is not for individuals. Here is what you can actually read, and the published rules that survive the gap.
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Australia & NZ
The 'nine accounting competency areas' are not nine: what CPA Australia, CA ANZ and IPA each actually require, occupation by occupation
Only one of the three assessing authorities publishes a nine-row table, and it marks two rows optional. The real requirement is seven areas for four occupations and eight for two — on which all three agree, using nine different names between them.
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UK & Ireland
NMC approved programmes are approved indefinitely — so the version question moved into the course name, and the register lists courses you cannot enrol on
The NMC register has no expiry date, no status filter and no intake-year field, because approval does not expire. What it does have is a course-type list where the standards generation is encoded as a suffix. This explains the three filters, the four fields of practice, the five-year rule on registering your award, and the one published rule on delivering a UK nursing programme abroad.
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Australia & NZ
NMBA does not publish a definition of a 'substantially equivalent' nursing qualification, because the phrase is not its test
The phrase comes from section 53 of the National Law, where it is one of four alternative limbs and an explicit matter of Board opinion. What NMBA actually publishes is a set of three qualification assessment criteria and three streams — and those are the things your transcript is measured against.
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Australia & NZ
Non-ICT bachelor plus an ICT master's: ACS assesses the master's on its own thresholds, and asks for the bachelor anyway
The published postgraduate rules — 50% ICT for a two-year award, 67% for an Australian postgraduate degree of only twelve subjects, plus three structural minimums — and what the pair of qualifications does to the experience requirement.
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UK & Ireland
NMC overseas registration versus studying nursing again in the UK: the published cost of each, and why the degree may not be open to you at all
The NMC publishes a single total for the overseas route. UK universities publish international fees for pre-registration nursing that are many times that, per year, for three years — and two of the four course pages we read today are closed to international applicants for the next intake.
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UK & Ireland
No eligible overseas teaching qualification: the teacher training in England you can actually enter, and what it costs when nobody funds you
DfE names two alternatives when the overseas recognition route is closed to you: assessment only QTS, or training in England. What it does not say in one place is which courses an international applicant can enter, which are barred by residency rather than visa, and why almost no funding reaches you.
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UK & Ireland
Nursing associate, registered nurse, assistant practitioner: two are protected titles on the NMC register and one is held by no UK regulator at all
The NMC sets a bachelor's degree as the minimum award for a registered nurse and a foundation degree for a nursing associate, and regulates the second only in England. 'Assistant practitioner' appears on no statutory register — not the NMC's, not the HCPC's — and this page shows where each fact is published.
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Transnational awards
Nursing regulators do not ask who awarded your degree — they ask whether the country you trained in would register you
The UK regulator writes to the regulator in your country of training and closes the application if that fails. Australia's board makes local recognition for registration its first assessment criterion, which every stream has to clear. For a transnational nursing award those two rules point at the teaching country, not the awarding university's country.
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UK & Ireland
The NMC will not accept your nursing qualification: what exists to study, what it says leads nowhere, and the part of the register with a lower published threshold
There is no NMC-approved bridging course for a rejected overseas nurse, and the NMC names none. What exists is a full approved pre-registration programme with prior learning capped at half of it — and, for England, a separate part of the register whose published academic test is a foundation-level degree.
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Australia & NZ
New Zealand's nursing approvals sit with the Nursing Council, not NZQA — and the competence assessment stopped being a programme and became two examinations
How to read New Zealand's accredited nursing programmes and the competence assessment route: which body accredits what, the three pre-registration qualification types, the two-part theoretical examination, the OSCE and where it must be sat, the cut-off dates that decide whether you get a CAP or an examination, and what the Australian practising certificate changes.
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Australia & NZ
New Zealand Level 7 Graduate Diplomas that regulators accept: what the qualification type actually is, and four that lead somewhere
NZQA defines a Graduate Diploma as a bachelor's-level qualification in a new subject — not a postgraduate one. That is exactly why it works as a career-change route into teaching and accountancy, and exactly why it does not substitute for a degree.
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Australia & NZ
New Zealand replaced the Competence Assessment Programme with an exam and an OSCE — but not on one date, and not for everyone
The Nursing Council stopped using CAPs to assess internationally qualified nurses, phasing the change in from December 2023 for registered nurses and September 2025 for enrolled nurses. What replaced it is two assessments, not one, and only some applicants have to sit them.
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Australia & NZ
Nursing Council of New Zealand: which assessment route each overseas nursing qualification takes, and the six jurisdictions that can skip the exams
The Council's own self-assessment tool sets out the decision tree in nine questions. Two facts decide everything: whether your qualification is equivalent to a New Zealand degree, and whether you hold current registration and 1,800 hours in one of six named jurisdictions.
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Australia & NZ
A New Zealand Level 7 comparison tells you the level and the type — and three of New Zealand's four professional registers do not use it at all
NZQA compares an overseas qualification to a level and a qualification type on the NZQCF, and the statement is valid indefinitely. What it does not do is settle registration: teaching runs on it, while nursing, pharmacy and engineering each run their own separate assessment.
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Australia & NZ
An NZQA IQA and an Australian Skills Assessment Answer Different Questions, and Neither Country Accepts the Other's
NZQA maps a qualification onto the New Zealand framework and refuses to look at work experience. Australian assessing authorities assess a qualification and employment against one occupation. NZQA states outright that it cannot accept another country's evaluation.
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Australia & NZ
New Zealand's exempt-qualifications list is published by the immigration department rather than the qualifications authority, and two versions of it are in force at once — one of them frozen at 2017 content
Who actually publishes the List of Qualifications Exempt from Assessment and under what instrument, why two appendices are live simultaneously and disagree about which applications each covers, the per-institution date ranges that disqualify people whose university is on the list, and what being listed does not exempt you from.
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Australia & NZ
NZQA's Actual Words Are Approval, Accreditation and Registration — and Two of the Phrases People Use Are Not NZQA's at All
Approval attaches to a programme, accreditation lets one provider deliver it, registration is what a private training establishment holds. 'Recognised qualification' and 'approved provider' are not NZQA terms.
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Australia & NZ
New Zealand and Australian Framework Levels Line Up Officially — the Qualification Names Sitting on Them Do Not
NZQA and the Australian Government referenced the two frameworks level for level, and both say that establishes nothing about your individual qualification. The mismatches are in the award names, not the numbers.
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Australia & NZ
The MCQ and the OSCE test different things, are run by different organisations, and are not both held in the same country
Ahpra's outcomes-based assessment is two exams in a fixed order. The MCQ is a knowledge exam that differs by division and is sat overseas; the OSCE is a clinical simulation exam held only in Australia, at a small number of venues. The deadlines between them are where cases get closed.
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UK & Ireland
Online psychology conversion courses and the UK Student route: what each provider states, in its own words, about studying its course on a visa
The cheapest BPS-accredited conversion courses are online and part-time. Providers' own pages say Student-visa applicants should apply full-time and on campus. This page reproduces what gov.uk publishes about which courses the route covers and what four named providers state — and points visa questions at the regulated advisers who can answer them.
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Transnational awards
Online delivery and in-country delivery: where the published rules draw a line, and where they say nothing at all
Mode of delivery is almost absent from academic recognition criteria and heavily written into immigration and provider-registration rules. Knowing which set of rules your question belongs to answers most of it.
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Australia & NZ
KAPS was retired, not paused: the last sitting was in November and OPRA began the following March
APC announced the replacement itself, with dates. What changed was the exam design, length and price; what did not change was eligibility, the registration process or the validity of results. The old name still appears on APC's own documents and on the Pharmacy Board's site, and that is not evidence of a transition period.
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UK & Ireland
Who is eligible to sit the ORE: the conditions the GDC actually checks, and where they are written down
The statutory rules do not contain the eligibility conditions — they define a candidate as someone who has met 'all other requirements for sitting the ORE as published by the Council'. Those requirements live on the GDC's application page: a qualification not on the recognised list, a UK ENIC statement, sixteen hundred hours of chairside experience, and a reference chain that can end the application on its own.
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UK & Ireland
ORE or LDS: the two GDC routes for an overseas-qualified dentist, compared on published fees, attempts, time limits and access
Both routes end at the same GDC registration application. They are run by different bodies, priced very differently, allow different numbers of attempts, and differ most of all in whether you can actually get a seat. This compares the published facts only — no exam content and no preparation advice.
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Australia & NZ
The Occupational Therapy Council no longer measures your degree for registration — Ahpra does that now, and the Council measures your practice instead
Since late 2025 the qualification assessment for OT registration sits with Ahpra and the Occupational Therapy Board, which publish the equivalence criteria and three named outcomes. The Council still runs two things: the competence assessment during supervised practice, and a separate skills assessment for migration whose test is WFOT approval at the time you graduated.
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UK & Ireland
Overseas architecture degree, no ARB Part 1: the three routes, and what each one actually demands
ARB publishes the rules and stops. This sets out the three published routes onto the UK Architects Register for someone qualified outside the UK, what evidence each needs, and the requirement none of them removes.
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UK & Ireland
Your engineering degree is not accredited for CEng: what the Engineering Council actually says to do, and what a technical report route involves
The Engineering Council's own answer is one sentence — contact a licensed professional engineering institution. Its examination closed years ago. What replaced it is individual assessment, which each institution names and runs differently, and ICE publishes the most detailed version of it.
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UK & Ireland
Overseas psychology degree: the BPS does not accredit it, it assesses you — the conditions, the fee, the timeline and what happens if you fall short
BPS says outright that it does not accredit international degrees. Instead your application for Graduate Membership is assessed individually against four published conditions, for a £65 non-refundable fee, in three to five weeks. If it fails, the remedy BPS names is a conversion course.
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Australia & NZ
New Zealand sorts overseas pharmacists by where the degree was awarded, not where they are registered
The Pharmacy Council runs two named routes — REQR for degrees from Canada, Ireland, the UK and the USA, and non-REQR for everywhere else. Being registered in one of those four countries does not put you on the first route if your degree came from somewhere else.
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Australia & NZ
Australian Physiotherapy Council pathways by where your degree was awarded: AUD 1,650, AUD 3,422 or AUD 7,814 for the same registration
Three assessment pathways, nine listed countries, and a 4.7-times cost spread driven entirely by the country of qualification. Two conditions decide which pathway you are on, and neither of them is your clinical ability.
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Transnational awards
Applying for a master's or PhD with a franchised bachelor's: what gets checked, in what order
Admission is not one gate. A comparability body places the award by its awarding institution and country; a national authority may require an equivalence certificate before an institution can admit you; and the university applies its own entry rules on top. Each stage asks a different question, and only one of them looks at where you studied.
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Australia & NZ
The Priestley 11 for overseas law graduates: the subjects are national, the variation is by country — not by Australian state
The eleven prescribed academic areas of knowledge are one national list, and the table of additional subjects an overseas graduate must complete is organised by country of qualification, not by state. Every admitting authority in Australia applies it, including in states that never adopted the Uniform Law.
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UK & Ireland
You do not need a law degree to become a solicitor in Ireland — the FE-1 gate takes seven different qualifying routes, and only one of them is a degree in law
The Law Society of Ireland publishes seven ways to become eligible to sit the FE-1 entrance examination. Six of them do not involve studying law at university at all. What separates them is not subject but level, jurisdiction and, in two cases, work experience.
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Australia & NZ
Your profession is not regulated in Australia: what studying actually changes, and what it does not
If nobody licenses your occupation, no course can grant you a right to practise — because there is no right to grant. The Australian Government's own wording is that each individual employer decides. That makes further study a commercial decision, not a compliance one, and it should be costed accordingly.
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Transnational awards
Professional accreditation and academic recognition are two systems, not two words for one thing
One attaches to a qualification and asks what level it is. The other attaches to a programme, in a country, for particular intake years — and it does not follow the university's name across a border.
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Australia & NZ
Engineers Australia's occupational categories are set by the length and type of the degree behind them, and each one maps to a different international accord
Professional engineer, engineering technologist and engineering associate are defined by qualification: a four-year professional engineering degree, a three-year engineering technology degree, a two-year advanced diploma or associate degree. Each maps to Washington, Sydney and Dublin respectively. Engineering manager is a fourth category that exists only for migration and confers no membership.
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UK & Ireland
The same Graduate Basis for Chartership, at wildly different prices: what UK psychology conversion courses actually charge, read from providers' own fee pages
Every course here is on the BPS accredited register and every one confers the same GBC. The published fees for the 2026/27 intake range from a four-figure total to a mid-five-figure one — and at a single university, the campus course costs an international applicant more than double the university's own online course.
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Transnational awards
Where a transnational award actually fails licensing — we were told architecture, psychology and teaching, and the published rules say otherwise
We set out to test a claim about which professions most often reject a degree taught in one country and awarded in another. Architecture holds up. Psychology and teaching do not — both have published routes designed for exactly that case. The hardest published bars are in law and nursing, and this explains why.
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UK & Ireland
Irish psychology conversion courses are on the undergraduate accreditation table, not a postgraduate one — and the expiry column is free text
The Psychological Society of Ireland accredits conversion courses as first qualifications in psychology, so a conversion MSc appears on the undergraduate list. The accreditation-status column is unstructured prose in at least four date formats, several already past on the day we read it. This page explains how to read a row and what an elapsed date does and does not prove.
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UK & Ireland
The PSI and BPS memorandum of cooperation runs in both directions — and it stops at the undergraduate stage
A BPS-accredited undergraduate or conversion degree with a 2:2 earns PSI Graduate Membership, and a PSI-accredited award earns BPS Graduate Basis for Chartered Membership. Both societies publish it. What the memorandum does not carry across is everything above that line.
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Transnational awards
What the transnational education reviews found — and how much of it the public is allowed to read
UK evaluators have visited transnational partnerships in fifteen countries since 2021, including Malaysia and the UAE. The per-country reports are for scheme members. This is what the public documents actually say, which promised public reports are no longer retrievable, and why Australia has no equivalent at all.
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UK & Ireland
Transferring to the Irish roll as a qualified foreign lawyer: the eight jurisdictions that qualify, the two papers no one is exempted from, and the route that skips the test entirely
The Law Society of Ireland publishes a closed list of jurisdictions whose lawyers may sit the QLTT, a separate Certificate of Eligibility costing €560 that must be posted on paper, and a subject-exemption process with two hard exclusions. Solicitors of Northern Ireland and England & Wales skip the test.
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UK & Ireland
Practising law abroad does count as SRA qualifying work experience — but only a solicitor of England and Wales can sign it off
The SRA says QWE 'may be obtained in England or Wales or overseas' and does not need to cover English and Welsh law. The constraint is not the work. It is who is allowed to confirm it, and the SRA's rule on that is narrow and specific.
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Transnational awards
Reading a university's partnership paperwork: what the approval file contains, and why a memorandum of understanding is not one
The documents that define a transnational programme are written for quality managers, and most of them are public. This is what each one is called, what it must contain, and which single document actually approves the arrangement.
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Australia & NZ
Which New Zealand occupations require registration and which do not — four different legislative designs, and why 'regulated' means four different things
New Zealand restricts the work for electricians, plumbers, real estate agents, immigration advisers and cadastral surveyors. It protects only the title for engineers, vets and chartered accountants. For teachers it binds the employer. Knowing which design applies changes what a qualification buys you.
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Cross-border
Regulators block the register, not the rules: what their robots.txt files reveal
Across the bodies we checked, the paths closed to automated crawlers are register lookups and search endpoints. The standards, guidance and policy pages are left open. That pattern tells you which kind of third-party page you can trust and which you must always verify at source.
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Australia & NZ
Review, reassessment and appeal at each Australian assessing authority: the windows range from 60 days to 12 months, and one authority has none
Five authorities, five different deadlines for challenging an unsuccessful skills assessment, and three different meanings of the word 'appeal'. The window is usually the thing that decides your options, and it starts running on the date of the decision.
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UK & Ireland
RIAI accredited is not the same as prescribed in Irish law — and the RIAI's own list contains qualifications that have one but not the other
In Ireland an architecture qualification is accredited by the RIAI and then prescribed by a Minister, and only the second step opens the Register of Architects. Two entries on the RIAI's own list are explicitly still waiting for it. This page explains the three words the list uses, which award is the accredited one, and why a RIBA-accredited Irish course does not count.
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UK & Ireland
How Ireland recognises an overseas architecture qualification: the RIAI routes that exist, and the one that is closed to you
The RIAI is the statutory registration body under the Building Control Act 2007. For a non-EU architecture degree the live routes are B2 and C2, on a published twice-yearly cycle. The Technical Assessment route under section 22 is not an overseas-qualification route and the Act stopped its clock.
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Cross-border
A permissive robots.txt is not permission: the two layers to check before you use a source
Four bodies whose robots.txt files are wide open prohibit copying or automated extraction in their terms of use — one of them naming data-gathering and data extraction tools directly. Being able to retrieve a page is not the same as being allowed to use it.
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UK & Ireland
RIAI practical experience: how much of it has to be in Ireland, and what you actually have to write down to prove it
Every RIAI route for an overseas-qualified architect places a floor under experience gained in Ireland — twelve months for the Professional Practice Examination, four years for the Route C2 exemption. And the evidence is not a logbook: it is a 10,000-word case study, a 4,000-word career evaluation and an oral examination.
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Transnational awards
One award, four rulebooks: why an employer, a regulator, a migration points test and an admissions office do not reach the same answer
The same transnational award is judged four separate times by four bodies asking four different questions. This page sets out what each one actually reads, in its own published words.
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UK & Ireland
Scotland and Northern Ireland are separate jurisdictions with separate regulators — and neither of them runs the SQE
What an overseas-qualified lawyer actually faces in the UK's two other legal jurisdictions: Scotland's eleven-exam Qualified Lawyers Assessment with published exemption refusal rates, and Northern Ireland, which publishes no transfer route for foreign lawyers at all.
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Australia & NZ
There is a floor under how short an ACS-accepted master's can be, and going shorter raises the ICT content you need rather than lowering it
The duration, unit-count and ICT-percentage thresholds ACS applies to postgraduate qualifications, why a twelve-subject master's needs a higher proportion of ICT than a longer one, why a holder of a non-ICT bachelor's is not on ACS's experience table at all, and why the register cannot rank programs by length.
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Transnational awards
Singapore's Public Service has no list of recognised universities — the test it actually applies to a foreign degree
The Public Service Division was asked in Parliament to set up a central body to screen foreign degrees and said no. Its published guidance to agencies is one sentence long, and for a foreign degree taught in Singapore that sentence is harder to answer than it looks.
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Australia & NZ
One missing accounting competency area does not require a whole degree — two of the three bodies publish the short route, and one does not
CPA Australia names foundation exams and accredited courses; CA ANZ calls them bridging subjects; the IPA publishes neither. Two competency areas have no CPA foundation exam at all, which decides whether a single unit can close your gap.
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Australia & NZ
Speech Pathology Australia barely examines your overseas degree — it checks which association you belong to, or makes you demonstrate competence through a staged portfolio
Speech pathology is self-regulating in Australia, so there is no Ahpra board and no equivalence table. SPA runs two routes: mutual recognition, which turns on full membership of a signatory association, and a four-stage competency assessment, which turns on evidence of practice and a superior English score. Neither is a curriculum comparison.
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UK & Ireland
You do not need a law degree to sit the SQE — you need a degree in any subject, or something the SRA accepts as equivalent
What the SRA counts as 'a degree or equivalent' for admission as a solicitor: the level-6 rule, what happens to an overseas degree, the £160 no-degree equivalence application, and the validation trap that catches applicants with an SQE2 exemption.
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Australia & NZ
The trans-Tasman scheme recognises a registration you already hold and expressly does not recognise qualifications — so studying once and registering in both countries is not what it does
What the trans-Tasman mutual recognition legislation actually entitles you to, the arrangement's own statement that it does not touch qualification requirements, how the notice and deemed-registration mechanism works, the one occupation carved out on both sides, and why nobody who has never registered can use any of it.
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Australia & NZ
AITSL counts supervised teaching practice in days, your university almost certainly recorded it in weeks or hours, and AITSL publishes no conversion between them
The requirement is a minimum number of days, in a named school setting, within a named age range, as a compulsory part of the teaching qualification — and it must be evidenced by a signed statement from the awarding university stating duration, age range and setting. AITSL nowhere defines how long a day is.
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Australia & NZ
New Zealand's approved teaching list will take you at graduate diploma level where Australia's will not, and the requirement that says so is one sentence long
How to read the Teaching Council's approved initial teacher education list: the two-column table and what it omits, the qualification-level requirement that makes a graduate diploma sufficient, who actually approves a programme, the four certification categories, the twenty-half-days rule, and what an Australian registration changes.
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Australia & NZ
New Zealand's first gate for an overseas teacher is not the Teaching Council — it is an NZQA assessment against initial teacher education standards
The Teaching Council accepts qualifications NZQA has assessed as equivalent, which means the teaching IQA decides most applications before the Council sees them. Two widely held credentials cannot be assessed by NZQA at all, and the Council opens a discretionary door for them.
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UK & Ireland
Teaching Council post-primary subject criteria: the 60-ECTS rule, the essential-areas rule, and three subjects with no aptitude test provider at all
Ireland measures an overseas degree against published criteria for each curricular subject: Level 8, 180 ECTS in the degree, 60 ECTS in the subject, and named essential areas that must appear. The current document took effect on 5 January 2026 and applies to applicants from outside Ireland who apply after that date.
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UK & Ireland
Teaching Council shortfall conditions: there is an official directory, it is not called what you think, and 'aptitude test' usually means a course of study
Ireland's Teaching Council publishes a directory of where to clear a registration shortfall — under the name Aptitude Test Provision, with no explanatory text on the page at all. This explains the four kinds of shortfall, the three-year clock and how it lapses, the two permitted ways to clear one, and what the 5 January 2026 change actually was.
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Transnational awards
Your TNE award does not meet the requirement you need it for: the remedy decision tree
Five things can go wrong, they have different repairs, and the repairs differ by years and thousands. Before you enrol in anything, get the refusal reason in writing and find out which of the five you are in — because two of them are fixed with paperwork and one of them cannot be fixed by studying at all.
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Transnational awards
Top-up degrees in Malaysia and the UAE: what the register records, and which part each reader looks at
A top-up is not a short degree. It is the last stage of a normal-length one, with the earlier stages arriving as credit you already hold. That structure — not the marketing label — is what an employer, a host-country authority, a credential assessor and an admissions office each check, and they check different parts of it.
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Transnational awards
If your campus closes or the partnership ends mid-course: what the published rules already require
Three different things can end — the teaching organisation, the partnership, or the course — and they trigger different obligations in different countries. What each regulator has published, and the gap between protecting your fees and finishing your degree.
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Australia & NZ
Trans-Tasman Mutual Recognition Runs Off Your New Zealand Registration, Not Your Degree — and Nothing About It Is Automatic
The Act creates an entitlement to Australian registration for someone already registered in New Zealand, but only after a statutory-declaration notice, and each registration authority applies it its own way.
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Transnational awards
2+1 and 2+2 twinning: where the year you spent abroad is actually recorded
The certificate is usually not the document that carries it. The transcript is — because transferred study enters your record as imported credit. What the published rules require, and what they leave to the agreement.
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Transnational awards
Certificate, transcript, diploma supplement: what each one is required to state, and which of them records where you actually were
The rules that govern award documents list their required contents exhaustively. Reading those lists answers the question people ask about branch-campus certificates — and shows which register, not which document, holds the location.
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Transnational awards
CAA, KHDA and the free zones: which UAE authority accredits a degree, and which one only lets the campus exist
The UAE runs two academic quality-assurance routes, not a hierarchy of three. A free-zone licence is a commercial permission. Here is what each body actually issues, where each publishes it, and which register the Ministry consults when it recognises a qualification.
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Transnational awards
UAE federal government hiring: the regulation still says 'equalized', and it is a condition of signing the contract
Article 21 of the Executive Regulations makes an authenticated and equalized qualification a precondition of the employment contract itself. The Ministry that issues that document renamed the service and split it into two processes — and which one applies to you is decided by where you studied, not by who awarded the degree.
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Transnational awards
The UAE recognition report: what replaced 'equivalency', and when a degree earned inside the UAE still needs one
The UAE renamed its equivalency service to recognition, moved it to the higher-education ministry, and runs two separate processes — one for qualifications issued abroad, one for qualifications issued inside the UAE. What each requires, produces and costs, from the Ministry's own service pages.
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Transnational awards
A UK degree earned without entering the UK: what the Graduate route rules test, and what your award still is
The Graduate route tests immigration history, not the degree. The published rule is short, dated and checkable — and it separates cleanly from the questions about alumni status and further study, which are decided elsewhere.
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UK & Ireland
A UK dental master's is not a route to GDC registration — what the Council lists, and what the universities say themselves
The GDC names three ways onto its dentists register and one approved degree, and a taught dental MSc is none of them. Some universities say so on the course page in one flat sentence. Others describe their MSc as preparation for the registration examination. Both kinds of page are quoted here, with fees.
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UK & Ireland
Which UK ENIC statement you need — and why two of the names people search for are not services any more
UK ENIC lists three statement services for individuals and two paid add-ons. The visa work people associate with it sits under a separate Ecctis service for the Home Office, and the product names still quoted by at least one UK regulator no longer appear anywhere on ENIC's site.
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Transnational awards
What a UK ENIC statement can and cannot say about a franchised or branch-campus award
UK ENIC runs two statement services, split by who awarded the qualification rather than where you studied. For a UK degree earned abroad that division decides which service you need — and ENIC publishes no rule about where study location fits.
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UK & Ireland
UK ENIC and NARIC Ireland are not the same service — and neither one decides whether you can practise
One is a paid, personalised statement from a company managed for the UK government. The other is a free, generic download. Both are routinely mistaken for a licence to work, and neither is one.
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Transnational awards
A UK law degree earned outside the UK: one certificate, three jurisdictions, three completely different rules
Singapore writes the answer into statute — the degree must have been read as a full-time internal candidate, and a twinning programme only counts if it is an approved one. Malaysia keeps a two-tier list organised by country of delivery, with an effective date on every entry. England asks about the level, not the place. Same certificate.
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UK & Ireland
Applying to both Ireland and the UK: neither statement is reusable in the other country, and one of them is free
A UK ENIC Statement of Comparability compares your qualification to the UK frameworks; a NARIC Ireland statement compares it to the Irish NFQ. Neither substitutes for the other. The Irish one costs nothing, so the sequencing question has an obvious answer — and a less obvious exception.
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UK & Ireland
A UK master's in public health or clinical science is not a step toward GMC registration — here is every postgraduate qualification the GMC does count
The GMC publishes a closed list of postgraduate qualifications that can replace PLAB. Every entry is a Royal College or Faculty examination. A taught university master's appears nowhere in the registration route, and the GMC states in writing that non-medical university education cannot even be used as evidence of English.
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Transnational awards
The UNESCO Global Convention, read for a transnational graduate: what it obliges, what it expressly permits, and how little of it reaches you yet
The first global treaty on higher education recognition is in force. Its duties run between States, its own text carves out cross-border education, and the countries where most TNE is delivered have not ratified it.
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Australia & NZ
An unaccredited accounting degree is not a barrier to a skills assessment. It is a syllabus obligation — and a different problem for membership
Accreditation does one specific thing at CPA Australia and CA ANZ: it removes the requirement to prove your subject content. Losing that is an evidence burden, not a disqualification. For membership the consequence is different, and CA ANZ names the route.
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Australia & NZ
Australian universities mostly do not ask how many years your bachelor's degree took, because their own standard three-year degree sits at the level a master's is built on
Why the three-versus-four-year question is the wrong one for most Australian postgraduate entry, what the qualifications framework actually says about entry to a master's, the professions where four years or honours really is required, and the two entry rules that do turn on where you studied.
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Canada & US
Bridge programme, second bachelor's, or apply directly: the three US routes compared against the rules that govern each
One of these routes is governed by federal guidance with a guarantee requirement and a ban on practical training, one is an ordinary degree admission, and one costs nothing to try. Most comparisons never mention that the SEVP guidance defining pathway programmes covers only English-proficiency cases — which is why the school's own contract wording decides everything else.
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Canada & US
Does MIT accept a three-year bachelor's degree? MIT's own admissions pages, quoted
MIT's Office of Graduate Education publishes a direct answer to this exact question. This page quotes it, quotes the Institute-wide rule behind it, and then shows why the answer still has to be checked department by department — with the department wordings we could read on 3 September 2026.
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Canada & US
Does Yale accept a three-year bachelor's degree? What Yale's own admissions pages say, school by school
Yale's Graduate School states in writing that a three-year degree meets its application requirement. Yale School of Management states a four-year requirement and then admits three-year international degrees anyway. Yale Law's M.S.L. asks for a doctorate. "Yale" is not one policy, and the Graduate School says so itself.
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Transnational awards
Validated vs franchised: the difference the certificate cannot show you, and the four places it is written down
Both put a foreign university's name on your degree. They differ on who wrote the course, whose student you are, who your fees go to, and who is responsible for you if the other side stops. Each of those four is on a document you can read.
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Australia & NZ
VETASSESS fees and published processing times, by assessment type — read on 3 September 2026, six days before the fees change
Every VETASSESS fee and published timeframe we could read on its own pages on 3 September 2026, plus the fee-increase notice sitting on the same page and the four places where the published numbers do not agree with each other.
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Canada & US
Four things the popular "US universities that accept a three-year bachelor's" guides get wrong
The list format itself is the error. A single US university can hold three different rules at once, an MBA answer never governs an MS application, Canada's credential-assessment machinery has no US counterpart, and at least one large US university publishes a flat refusal. All four points are shown here in the universities' own words.
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Australia & NZ
Which Australian qualification closes a VETASSESS 'major not highly relevant' gap — the level is AQF 5 to 8, and the one that does not work is the obvious one
VETASSESS's Pathway 2 accepts an additional qualification at Diploma, Advanced Diploma, Associate Degree or Graduate Diploma level in a highly relevant field, and cuts the employment requirement from three years to two. It will not accept a Graduate Diploma as a substitute for the degree itself.
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Australia & NZ
VETASSESS general, trade and priority streams: which one applies to your occupation, and why the trade side is a different organisation's rules
VETASSESS runs three things that look like one service. The professional stream, the trade stream delivered under Trades Recognition Australia programmes, and a paid priority service available to one of them and not the other.
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Australia & NZ
The VETASSESS 'highly relevant major' requirement, occupation by occupation: what the phrase means, where it is published, and the four pathways it opens or closes
Every VETASSESS occupation page states a group letter and, usually, a short list of highly relevant major fields of study. Here is what those two things jointly decide, the four pathways they map onto, and the traps in reading a criteria page.
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Australia & NZ
VETASSESS occupation groups: the qualification level each one demands — and the sixth group its own FAQ still does not list
Groups A to F set different AQF floors and different numbers of pathways. VETASSESS's FAQ says the groups run A to E; its occupation pages carry a Group F. Both were read on the same day.
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Australia & NZ
A graduate diploma sits inside VETASSESS's definition of "Diploma or higher" and outside its definition of "Bachelor degree or higher"
VETASSESS spells out what each level includes, group by group. The graduate diploma appears in the Certificate II, Certificate IV and Diploma enumerations and is absent from the bachelor one — which decides whether it can carry an application on its own.
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Transnational awards
The Washington Accord recognises accreditation done inside a signatory's own jurisdiction — which is why a branch-campus engineering degree turns on who accredited it, not who awarded it
Both the International Engineering Alliance and one of its founding signatories publish the same clause: Accord recognition covers only programmes accredited by a signatory within its own national or territorial boundaries. This sets out what that settles for engineering programmes taught in Malaysia, Singapore and the UAE — and what it does not.
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Australia & NZ
Washington, Sydney or Dublin Accord: which one your engineering qualification falls under, and the two dates that decide whether it counts
The three engineering education accords map to three occupational categories, not three quality tiers. The accord your programme sits under is set by the programme, and recognition runs only from the signatory's admission date — with a gap before it that nobody is obliged to honour.
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Australia & NZ
What an Australian Skills Assessment Outcome Letter Actually States — and What It Does Not
The assessing authorities publish the structure of their own outcome letters and the limits on what they mean. ACS, VETASSESS, Engineers Australia and the Department of Education, quoted directly.
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Transnational awards
What "3+0" actually means — and the three things it changes about your degree
No regulator we could find defines "3+0". It describes where you sit, not who owns the course or who awards it. Here is what the label does settle, what it leaves open, and the substitution that gets you a real answer.
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Australia & NZ
What changed for internationally qualified nurses in 2025 was an addition, not a replacement — and that is why older guides read as wrong
A new NMBA registration standard took effect on 23 April 2025, creating two streamlined pathways for registered nurses tied to a short list of comparable jurisdictions. The existing Self-check, criteria and Stream A/B/C process was not retired. Guides that describe either one alone are describing half the system.
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Australia & NZ
Some AU/NZ regulators publish their accredited-course list as a readable page; others hide it behind a search box you cannot link to
Whether you can check your own course against a regulator's list, without asking anyone, depends entirely on the format that regulator chose. We opened each list and recorded what we found: open HTML pages, PDFs, JavaScript search widgets with no data in the page at all, and one accreditor that publishes no list.
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Transnational awards
"Country of qualification" is not one question: what four bodies are actually asking when the form has only one box
For a transnational award the awarding country and the teaching country are different, and the bodies that ask for "the country" want different ones. Four published examples, each in the body's own words, and how to tell which country a given field is asking about.
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Australia & NZ
Which Australian authority assesses which occupation — and why the answer lives in a legislative instrument, not on a website
There are 39 approved skills assessing authorities in Australia. The binding list of occupation-to-authority pairings is a compilation of a migration instrument, currently F2026C00265 dated 28 March 2026. Here is how to read it, and the four traps in reading it wrong.
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Cross-border
Why there is no single list of recognised qualifications, and what to check instead
Every register of recognised qualifications belongs to a different body, and almost none of them let anyone else republish it. That is why no combined list exists, and why the only reliable answer comes from checking the official registers one at a time.
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Transnational awards
Who actually regulates a branch campus: the host regulator, the home regulator, and the question neither of them answers
Two regulators cover an overseas campus, and they cover different things. The home regulator follows the awarding body. The host regulator licenses the campus and approves the programmes. Neither of them decides whether an employer or a licensing board will accept the degree.
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Canada & US
What an ECA actually costs: every published line item at the five designated organisations, plus the charges that are not theirs
The headline fee is between $200 and $264, but one of those numbers excludes 13% HST and delivery while another includes tax. Add administration fees, courier, duplicates, renewals, appeals and the transcript charges your own university levies, and the spread is much wider than the sticker price suggests.
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Canada & US
ECA document requirements by source country: the four questions each agency answers differently
Two designated agencies want the transcript from the institution that taught you; two want it from the body that awarded the qualification; and for one country they disagree about whether a consolidated transcript is acceptable at all. A structural guide to reading any agency's country page, with the divergences we verified on 3 September 2026.
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Canada & US
Online, distance and open-university degrees in a Canadian ECA: what the five agencies actually publish
IRCC's own page says distance learning counts for education points. None of the five designated organisations publishes a blanket exclusion for distance-delivered foreign degrees. What they publish instead is a documentation rule — the mode of study has to be on the face of the record — plus one dated, institution-specific exception. Read on 3 September 2026.
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Canada & US
ECA processing times, agency by agency — and the three numbers one agency publishes for the same report
IQAS says 15 business days. ICAS says 20 weeks. CES's home page says 60 business days while its own process page says 40, and 7 if your documents arrive digitally. Read from each body's own pages on 3 September 2026, with what each clock actually starts on.
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Canada & US
The five designated ECA organisations, line by line: what each one publishes about price, speed, documents, scope and appeals
A side-by-side reading of what CES, ICAS, WES, IQAS and ICES actually publish, read on 3 September 2026. They do not even price the same unit: two charge per credential, three per application, and only two quote a tax-inclusive figure.
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Canada & US
Review, reassessment and appeal at each designated ECA organisation — four routes, four deadlines, and one that is free
One agency reviews errors free for a year and charges $75 only after that. Two charge $200 refundable only if you win. One runs a two-stage process ending with an external consultant reporting to a management committee. And on one agency's site we could find no published review policy at all. Read on 3 September 2026.
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Canada & US
The US government does define what a pathway program is, and the definition says the words bridge, foundation year and pathway all mean the same thing — which is why a directory of them cannot be built
How to read the US bridge and pathway category: the federal definition that exists and the two that do not, why these programs are absent from the national accreditation database under their own names, what school certification for international students actually covers, the progression conditions universities publish verbatim, and who is really operating the program.
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Canada & US
US graduate schools do not have one policy on three-year bachelor's degrees, they have five — and at one university a three-year Australian degree is eligible or ineligible depending on where you went to high school
The five patterns US graduate admissions policies actually fall into, verbatim from the institutions' own pages: equivalence with no year requirement, an explicit four-year rule, a rule that outsources the decision to a credential evaluator, country-specific carve-outs, and Bologna degrees named as sufficient. Plus who inside the university makes the call, and what no federal body says about any of it.
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Canada & US
Bangladesh pass and honours degrees in a Canadian ECA: no agency publishes the distinction, and one publishes a very long institution list
We looked for a published Canadian rule separating a Bangladeshi pass degree from an honours degree and found none at any of the five designated organisations. What one of them does publish for Bangladesh is a list of dozens of named institutions it will not evaluate — and a note that the college that taught you usually cannot issue the mark sheets.
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Canada & US
Zhuanke, zhuanshengben and a benke without a degree certificate: how Canadian ECA agencies name and document Chinese credentials
China is the one source country where the designated agencies do not ask your university for anything — they route the documents through a national verification centre instead. And the categories printed on their own forms are more granular than the usual bachelor's/master's split: they name the upgrading route and the graduation-without-degree case separately.
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Canada & US
From ECA statement to CRS education points: IRCC's 152-row table read line by line
IRCC publishes every phrase an ECA report can contain and maps each to one of eight levels of education. Read closely, the table shows that field of study can outrank degree level, that no standalone postgraduate diploma appears anywhere, that every combination row starts with a three-year credential, and that the two tabs on the same page do not contain the same rows.
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Canada & US
NNAS and the provincial nursing regulators: the shared front door is no longer shared
The standard advice is that internationally educated nurses start with NNAS. On the regulators' own pages that is no longer true in Ontario, British Columbia or Nova Scotia — Ontario now requires an ECA from one of three named organisations, British Columbia routes applicants to a different assessor entirely, and Nova Scotia treats a regulator-to-regulator verification as primary. Read on 3 September 2026.
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Canada & US
An Indian three-year bachelor's and a Canadian ECA: which published rules actually bear on it
The length of the degree is the part people worry about and the part IRCC's own table treats most simply — three-year and four-year bachelor's degrees are separate rows in the same box. What varies between the designated agencies is not length at all: it is which Indian authority they defer to, who is allowed to issue your mark sheets, and whether a consolidated transcript counts.
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Canada & US
Kardani, Karshenasi and Karshenasi Arshad in a Canadian ECA: the document rules, and the four universities that are treated differently
Both agencies with a published Iran page name the Persian award titles directly and require the record in Persian — with one agency naming exactly four universities whose English transcripts it will accept. One agency also publishes a short list of Iranian institutions it will not assess, and a route for applicants who cannot obtain documents at all.
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Canada & US
A PGDM in a Canadian ECA: the diploma that is not a degree, and the list that decides it
One designated agency publishes exactly how it handles Indian post-graduate diplomas — it defers to a named Indian authority's list and warns that the list is date-specific. Another has built a separate 'Non-University Postgraduate Diploma' section into its document tool. And IRCC's own 152-row results table contains no standalone row for a postgraduate diploma at all.
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Canada & US
An Indian two-year master's in a Canadian ECA: the rule that overrides "highest credential only"
IRCC says you normally only need your highest credential assessed. For a master's awarded in India, one designated agency publishes the opposite — the bachelor's must come too, or the master's cannot be evaluated at all — and its own two live pages list different exceptions to that rule.
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Canada & US
Kenyan and Ghanaian diplomas and HNDs in a Canadian ECA: two countries, and one of them is not on the biggest published country list at all
One designated agency publishes country-specific rules for 86 countries and Ghana is on the list while Kenya is not. For Ghana that agency publishes an unusually precise rule about affiliated colleges, naming two worked examples. Kenya's own framework treats the Higher National Diploma as an entry qualification for the bachelor's level — and no Canadian agency mentions it.
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Canada & US
Nepal's Proficiency Certificate and bachelor's degrees in a Canadian ECA: where each one sits on the agencies' own forms
Both designated agencies that publish Nepali document requirements list the Proficiency Certificate among secondary-education documents, and Tribhuvan University itself treats it as an entry qualification alongside 10+2. On degree length, Nepal's own regulator gives three different answers in a single report — which is why no Canadian agency publishes a rule about it.
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Canada & US
A Nigerian HND and a Canadian ECA: the work-experience gate that no Canadian rule accounts for
NBTE's own curricula call the HND "a two-year terminal academic programme" and require a National Diploma plus at least one year of post-ND cognate work experience to enter it. That structure — two years of study on top of two, with a compulsory year of employment in between — has no counterpart in the Canadian rules, and no designated agency publishes a rule about it.
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Canada & US
A Nigerian National Diploma in a Canadian ECA: four semesters, a compulsory industrial attachment, and the two words that decide whether it is assessable
NBTE's own curricula define the ND as four semesters plus a compulsory Supervised Industrial Work Experience Scheme, with 65 to 75 semester credit units and SIWES graded pass or fail. Three of the five Canadian agencies publish that they do not assess work experience — and one publishes a minimum size that a shorter award has to clear before comparability is ever reached.
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Canada & US
Pakistan's two-year BA/BSc, the Associate Degree and the four-year degree: what HEC publishes, and why two Canadian agencies will not take HEC attestation
Pakistan's own undergraduate policy, effective from Fall 2023, sets out five categories of undergraduate programme and a bridging route for holders of the conventional two-year degree. Meanwhile HEC has moved attestation fully online — and one Canadian designated agency refuses HEC-attested documents outright while another refuses them by email.
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Canada & US
How each provincial engineering regulator assesses a foreign engineering degree — including the one that does not want a credential report at all
Two regulators will accept a credential assessment from one named company and nothing else. One requires no third-party evaluation whatsoever and takes transcripts straight from your university. And the one that says it most plainly says the credential report is not the assessment: it only authenticates documents. Read from eight regulators' own pages on 3 September 2026.
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Canada & US
Philippine credentials and the K-12 transition: the one dated rule a Canadian ECA agency actually publishes
One designated agency publishes a hard date rule for the Philippines: for an ECA, secondary education completed before 2019 does not qualify for evaluation at all. That single line matters most to the people IRCC sends to have their secondary credential assessed as a fallback — and it closes that fallback for a whole generation of graduates.
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Canada & US
ACCA, CA and CIMA in a Canadian ECA: three of the five designated agencies name a chartered accountancy qualification as something they will not assess
Two agencies use the same example in their exclusion lists — a chartered accountant designation — and a third excludes professional examinations outright. IRCC's own 'professional degree' box exists, but all 38 of its rows are health disciplines and law; accountancy is not among them. What is published, and what an accountancy qualification actually needs instead.
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Canada & US
Qualification type × ECA agency: which of the five will even look at what you hold
Before any agency decides what your credential compares to, it decides whether it is in scope. On that first question the five designated organisations openly disagree — a Chartered Accountant designation, a trade certificate, a medical specialisation and a credential under one year in length are each refused by some and not mentioned by others. A scope matrix built from their own published pages.
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Canada & US
When an ECA is not the assessment: the three occupations IRCC removes, and the far larger group nobody removes
For architects, physicians and pharmacists IRCC hands the assessment to a named professional body. For engineers, nurses, teachers, accountants and every other regulated occupation it does not — and every designated agency says in writing that its report does not license anyone. The published boundary, and what sits on each side of it.
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Canada & US
Sri Lanka's "General" and "Special" degrees: the terms the national framework no longer uses, and what a Canadian ECA reads instead
We checked the premise first. "General Degree" and "Special Degree" appear nowhere in Sri Lanka's own qualifications framework or in the UGC's current admissions handbook — the official vocabulary is Bachelors and Bachelors Honours, and the framework says explicitly that level is set irrespective of the length of the programme. No Canadian designated agency publishes a rule about either.
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Canada & US
How provincial teacher regulators assess foreign teacher education: three provinces now mandate one assessor, three do their own, and the quantitative standard differs in every one
Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Nova Scotia have consolidated on a single credential assessment service — and Manitoba explicitly stopped accepting WES reports for teachers on 31 October 2025. Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta name no outside evaluator at all. The published minimums for a foreign teacher education programme are different numbers in every province we read.
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Canada & US
A UK or Bologna three-year bachelor's in a Canadian ECA: we went looking for the special rule and there isn't one
The premise that a British or European three-year degree is treated differently from a three-year degree elsewhere does not survive contact with the published Canadian record. No designated agency publishes a UK or Bologna length rule, and IRCC's own table puts three-year and four-year bachelor's degrees in the same box regardless of country. What the UK pages do publish is about who issues the paperwork.
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