The United States of America has a foreign credential evaluation service. This agency is responsible for looking at the education people have gained at foreign institutions in order to provide U.S equivalence. This is used when people are immigrating, looking to get licensed in the U.S or attempting to further their education.

Foreign credential evaluation has been a relatively unknown field, however recently, over the last 30 years, it has evolved greatly and is rapidly growing. In the beginning, an educational equivalent for the U.S. was determined by the number of years one had studied in a foreign country compared to the level of education they would have completed in those same years in the U.S. Of course, this is not an accurate evaluation.

Very little consideration was given to the education studied each year. In many countries the students attend class almost twice as many hours or more as students in the US. Methods of evaluating foriegn education credentials have become more complex over the years and what was once a fairly black and white field has become colored in shades of gray.

Initially, the evaluation process was done by the U.S. Department of Education by the Foreign Credential Evaluation Service. But during 1966-1968, the FCES decreased in size and was eventually closed in 1970. Compared to other countries, there aren't any uniform national standards for the assessment of foreign educational credentials in this country.

After 1970, foreign credential evaluations started being done primarily by private credential evaluation firms or by staff at colleges and universities. Nationwide standards for reviewing foreign educational credentials have developed mainly from placement suggestions provided by the Council, but this is not a government-sponsored agency and their advice is non-binding. Worldwide standards are also given by UNESCO, and although these are oftentimes legally binding, they are occasionally ignored.

It should be said that the Council has been in existence since 1955 and their principles generally carry a great deal of weight with many institutions and organizations within the United States. Private evaluation groups, colleges and universities make their own judgment guidelines and many of these are based somewhat upon those made by the Council. In addition, they are helpful in cases of immigration and employment purposes. UNESCO guidelines should be more influential but for unknown reasons most agencies ignore them, even though they are the only ones that are legally-binding.