WAC Signal, Episode 10: What Is a Degree Worth in Another Country?
World Assessment Council · 30 October 2026 · https://worldassessmentcouncil.org/signal/what-is-a-degree-worth-in-another-country/

THE QUESTION

If a nurse trained in Manila or a doctor trained in Jaipur moves to Toronto or Houston, what is the degree in their bag actually worth when they land?

This is WAC Signal, from the World Assessment Council. Evidence and ideas for the changing world of learning.

Episode ten. What Is a Degree Worth in Another Country?

THE SIGNAL

More than seven point three million students now study outside their home country, according to UNESCO. But the degree they carry home or onward has no fixed value. Its worth is decided by a chain of gatekeepers: recognition bodies, professional regulators, verifiers and, finally, employers. Any one of them can take value away.

Demand for that gatekeeping is at record levels. In Germany, requests to the central office for evaluations of foreign higher education degrees rose fifty-five percent in 2024, to about one hundred and eighteen thousand four hundred. Germany's federal statistics office recorded a record high of about ninety-five thousand five hundred recognition procedures that year.

The rules are moving too. UNESCO's Global Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education came into force in March 2023, and had forty-two states party to it as of July 2026. By May 2026, twenty-seven US states and two territories had passed alternative licensing pathways for doctors trained abroad. And in April 2025, India's University Grants Commission notified rules for granting equivalence to foreign degrees, with decisions due within fifteen working days.

Even those redesigning the system say it is behind. In October 2026, announcing a proposed portable record for health professionals, TruMerit president and CEO Peter Preziosi said, quote. The systems used to recognize qualifications across borders have not kept pace.

The question is how much of a degree's value survives the journey, and who decides.

THE EVIDENCE

Start with the legal promise. Under the Lisbon Recognition Convention of 1997, ratified by fifty-five countries, a foreign qualification must be recognized unless the receiving authority can show a substantial difference. The burden of proof sits with the receiving country. But the promise is narrow. It covers further study, use of a title and general access to the labor market. Regulated professions sit outside it, and employers in unregulated jobs remain free to discount any credential.

Professional licensing is where most value is won or lost. Statistics Canada's 2021 Census found that only forty-one point one percent of immigrants with a foreign medical degree worked as doctors, against ninety point one percent of people with a Canadian medical degree. For nursing, working as nurses or in closely related jobs, it was thirty-six point five percent against eighty-seven point four.

The licensing exam shows the same gap. In 2025, according to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, eighty-six point seven percent of first-time, US-educated candidates passed the NCLEX-RN. Of the fifty-two thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven first-time candidates educated abroad, forty-seven point three percent passed. For those educated in India, it was thirty-three point three percent. One caveat: pass rates reflect who chooses to sit the exam, as well as how they were trained.

Even within one country, portability differs by program. The Washington Accord for engineering has twenty-five full signatories. But for India, it applies only to programs accredited by the National Board of Accreditation at institutions it classes as Tier 1. Two engineering degrees from the same country can travel very differently.

Then the wider labor market. In Canada's 2021 Census, twenty-five point eight percent of immigrants with a foreign degree were overqualified for their jobs, more than double the eleven point eight percent for immigrants with a Canadian degree. In the United States, a 2016 Migration Policy Institute analysis of census data from 2009 to 2013 found twenty-nine percent of foreign-educated immigrant graduates underemployed or unemployed, against eighteen percent of the US-born. Those data are now more than a decade old.

Across the EU, the OECD found that immigrants with foreign qualifications are twice as likely as the native-born to be overqualified. A host-country degree cuts that gap by seventy-five percent. That figure is descriptive, not causal: immigrants who earn a local degree differ in age at arrival, language and networks.

So does recognition itself help? The strongest evidence comes from Germany. Brücker, Glitz, Lerche and Romiti linked survey responses to employment records and followed immigrants month by month. Three years after full recognition, employment rates were twenty-four point five percentage points higher, and hourly wages nineteen point eight percent higher, than for immigrants without recognition. It is not a randomized trial, but its timing comparison is far stronger than a simple snapshot.

And recognition in Germany is rarely a flat no. Of fifty-five thousand three hundred and thirty-two applications finally decided under federal law in 2024, just one point three percent were refused. But forty-six point six percent had to complete compensatory measures first, such as an adaptation qualification.

Then there are graduates who go home. In China, more than eighty percent of students who study abroad now return. Du, Sun, Zhao and Zweig found that returnees with foreign postgraduate degrees earned about twenty percent more than matched domestic postgraduates. For foreign bachelor's degrees, they found no significant premium.

THE TENSION

Recognition is not enough on its own. In a 2019 Australian survey, ninety percent of recent migrants who applied had their overseas qualification recognized. Yet only fifty-four percent of those who had worked used their highest qualification in their first job. Among the third who reported difficulty finding work, sixty-five percent cited a lack of Australian experience or references. The data are from 2019, and the two shares describe overlapping, not identical, groups.

And the gatekeepers sometimes have a point. Ferrer, Green and Riddell found that among university-educated immigrants, differences in literacy explained about two-thirds of the earnings gap with the Canadian-born. The Migration Policy Institute found that graduates who spoke English not well or not at all were five times more likely to be in low-skilled jobs than those who spoke only English.

Experience and names may matter more than the degree. In a randomized résumé experiment in Toronto, Oreopoulos found that résumés with English names and Canadian education and experience got interview requests sixteen percent of the time. Résumés with Chinese, Indian or Pakistani names and foreign education and experience got them five percent of the time. Among résumés with four to six years of Canadian experience, where the degree was earned had no effect. The name alone moved callbacks from sixteen to eleven percent.

Fraud justifies caution too. By early 2021, Prospects Hedd, a UK degree-verification service, had forced eighty-five websites offering fake UK university qualifications to close. And delivery mode matters. In January 2023, China ended its pandemic-era acceptance of foreign degrees studied online.

THE IMPLICATION

A degree does not travel as a fixed asset. Its value abroad is set link by link, by a recognition body, a regulator, a verifier and an employer, and a weak link can cancel strengths elsewhere.

That cuts two ways. Part of the discount is real: literacy and language. Part of it is the system: slow processes, narrow accords and employer bias that recognition cannot fix. A university that sends graduates abroad can still act on the parts it controls.

THE WAC VIEW

In our white paper, What Is a Degree Worth in Another Country?, we propose the LEVER Test. A degree travels only if it passes five layers, and the weakest layer sets its value.

Legitimate. The program is properly authorized at home, and delivered in a form the destination accepts. Equivalent. The recognition body will treat it as comparable at the intended level. Verifiable. A third party can confirm it at the source, quickly. Entitled. If the target job is regulated, the degree meets the license's academic bar. And Readable. Employers understand it, and will pay for it.

Apply it to one program, one destination and one target job at a time. Rate each layer strong, partial or weak, and treat the weakest as the ceiling. A strong Equivalent will not save a weak Legitimate. India excludes franchised qualifications, China rejects purely online study, and New York gives no credit for online law courses, whatever the program's quality. Then fix the weakest layer first.

The evidence fits the test. Germany shows that Equivalent and Entitled raise wages. Australia shows that Readable can fail even when Equivalent succeeds. And regulators can move a layer too. In 2023, Professional Engineers Ontario became the first regulator to drop the requirement for Canadian work experience under a 2021 provincial law. Labour Minister Monte McNaughton said only a quarter of internationally trained immigrants in Ontario worked in the professions they had studied for, adding, quote. It doesn't take a math major to figure out these numbers don't add up.

For universities, we recommend three things. Apply the LEVER Test to each professional program for the three to five countries where most graduates go, and publish the results to applicants before they enroll. Issue degrees and transcripts as verifiable digital records at the source, with a stated verification turnaround. And seek accreditation at the tier that mutual-recognition accords actually cover, without relying on franchised or fully online delivery for graduates heading to countries that exclude them.

WHAT TO WATCH

One. Whether the new US licensing pathways for doctors trained abroad deliver. The main source on them is World Education Services, which helped draft model legislation, so treat its figures as advocacy reporting. Their long-term effect on doctors' pay and mobility is unknown.

Two. Whether digital credentials actually speed recognition or raise pay. More than thirty-five thousand European Digital Credentials for Learning had been issued to Europass wallets by October 2024, but our white paper found no published evaluation showing they shorten recognition times or raise earnings.

Three. Whether the returnee premium holds. Estimates for China range from zero for bachelor's degrees to over one hundred percent, depending on method, and one consultant describes the Chinese halo effect as having largely faded. That is an expert view, not a measurement.

The sources for every figure in this episode are listed on the episode page, along with the full white paper, What Is a Degree Worth in Another Country?, at worldassessmentcouncil.org.

WAC Signal is produced by the World Assessment Council, with AI-assisted research and AI voices, and every claim is checked against its source before publication.

This has been WAC Signal. Evidence and ideas for the changing world of learning.


Sources: https://worldassessmentcouncil.org/signal/what-is-a-degree-worth-in-another-country/#sources
WAC Signal is an editorial audio series from the World Assessment Council. Episodes are researched and written with AI-assisted editorial tools, narrated with AI voices, and checked against their cited sources before publication. Every episode page lists its sources.