Sheila Danzig, director of Career Consulting International and John Kersey, President of Marquess Educational Consultants Limited, co-authored a study of this issue called Does the Value of Your Degree Depend on the Color of Your Skin?"
(PRWEB via PressReleaseHelp) October 11, 2005 -- Consider Nigel Holmes, who has a three-year bachelor's degree from one of the UK's least competitive universities, London Metropolitan University. He would have little trouble having it accepted as equivalent to a US bachelor's degree in the United States.
Now consider Rajendra Kumar, who has a three-year bachelor's degree from India's top rated university one acknowledged to be on a par with MIT. He would face an uphill battle getting American graduate schools to accept his degree as equivalent to a US bachelor's degree.
Why the different treatment of these college credentials? According to two degree evaluators from the US and UK who recently completed a study of acceptance of Indian three-year bachelor's degrees in the US, reasons for accepting the UK three-year degree but not the Indian one do not stand up to logical scrutiny and appear to indicate racism rather than good judgment.
Sheila Danzig, director of Career Consulting International , and John Kersey, President of Marquess Educational Consultants Limited , co-authored a study of this issue called Does the Value of Your Degree Depend on the Color of Your Skin. Their article, which has been accepted for publication in the online edition of Academics India, concludes that the two educational systems are materially equivalent. Indeed, the present Indian system of higher education was actually created by the British when Great Britain occupied India, basing it on the Oxford/Cambridge model.
Danzig and Kersey examine and reject several reasons given for non-equivalency of the three-year Indian bachelor's degrees, pointing to standards put forth by UNESCO, the Canadian Provincial Assessment Committee and the Council of Europe, among others. Their conclusion: Such a difference in policy, where not made on a sound academic basis, may well be concluded to be racially discriminatory. If the value of your degree is not to depend on the color of your skin, the Indian three-year bachelor's degree must be accorded its proper value as an international credential.
As part of their study, Danzig and Kersey looked at the admission requirements stated at the web sites of many US graduate schools and queried numerous directors of admissions about their school's policies. While the Wharton School accepts three-year Indian bachelor's degrees for admission to graduate studies in business, they are definitely in the minority.
When we started including this study with our evaluations as well as expanding the evaluation itself to make the matter very clear, the rate of acceptance of the degree has increased dramatically, says Danzig, whose company evaluates international educational credentials. When the arguments are laid out objectively, people understand the inequity and are open to a proper equivalency. But the evaluation must be done properly.
This has a serious impact on people's ability to immigrate, get higher education and obtain employment, adds Kersey. We are very proud of what we are doing to right this wrong. We are confident that the more exposure our study gets, the acceptance of the three year Indian bachelor's degree will grow, as it should.
Sheila Danzig is the director of Career Consulting International a foreign credential evaluation agency that evaluates the three-year Indian degree (with adequate contact hours) as equivalent to a US Bachelor's degree.
John Kersey is the president of Marquess Educational Consultants, Ltd. a British educational consultancy firm with particular interests in international credential evaluation and equivalency.