Image credit: Samer Daboul via pexels.com     In our previous blog post, we discussed the Gregorian calendar and countries that use it or variations of the Gregorian calendar for their country’s date system. Next time, we’ll discuss countries that follow their own system and might or might not include Gregorian dates on their official records. Before we do that, however, we’re going to briefly discuss the backgrounds of the calendar systems to explain a bit more about how different calendars can vary so much, not just in start dates as we’ve already seen but in the number of days,...

Image source: Tara Winstead via pexels.com   Let’s talk about calendars! If you’re newer to international credentials evaluation or conduct most of your evaluation work from documents translated into your own language, you may be unaware of the importance of understanding and reading dates as they appear on academic records in the local language and calendar system. Dates–from birth dates to enrollment dates to graduation dates–are important for a number of reasons. They help us get a better feel for the applicant’s age at start and end dates, they set our expectations for the duration of a program, and they...

Image source: Kelly M Lacy via Pexels.comIn Brazil, both higher education institutions and the programs they offer must have reconhecimento (recognition) by the Ministry of Education and be listed in the register of recognized programs. Recognized programs lead to the award of national titulos (titles) that are legally recognized as part of the formal higher education system. At the graduacao (undergraduate) level, this is fairly straight-forward. Generally, undergraduate studies in Brazil are not too difficult to research on the Ministry of Education e-MEC website for the Cadastro Nacional de Cursos e Institucoes de Educacao Superior Cadastro (National Registry of Higher...

  The Overseas Examinations Commission (OEC) was legally established by an Act of Parliament under the Ministry of Education of Jamaica in 2005. This incorporated the old Overseas Examinations Committee, which had been created in 1887 to administer British O level examinations for a few dozen students. Since the 1960s, the Committee had administered examinations for many of the British secondary and pre-university examination boards and became the body responsible for overseeing international examinations conducted in Jamaica. As a result of the new act, the Commission became a statutory board of government. Among its other services, the OEC administers and...

  Image credit: to Iwaria, via Pexels.com   Be sure to also read a shorter version from earlier this year here!   In Benin, recognized higher education is available through public universities whose programs have de facto recognition, private higher education institutions co-signed by the Benin Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, or private higher education institutions approved by the regional accrediting body, Conseil Africain et Malgache pour l'Enseignement Superieur / CAMES (African and Malagasy Council for Higher Education). CAMES has been accrediting programs in Benin since 1988. Benin does not accredit private higher education institutions as a whole;...