Are US employers bias towards foreign degrees ?

I came across this report about immigrants with foreign degrees having a hard time finding employment in the US. It doesn't mention about the degrees being online.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/brain-waste-immigrants-foreign-college-degrees-philly-mal-employment-20180406.html

I do sic some non-US based online programs (from UK mostly, now i'm starting to find some from other parts of EU as well) I'm just wondering, what if it was a US citizen who got educated from an overseas (online) degree program?

Let's say from a UK university, like the University of Derby, or the University of Hertfordshire. I doubt many employers in the US would have heard of these lower ranked Unis from the UK.

How will the perception be? Will the degree still be a 'tick in the box'?

Maybe a scenario ~

X (who's from the US) has got 5 years of IT experience, he manages to enter the University of Hertfordshire's 1 year top-up BSc in Computer Science program online, after which, he goes on to do a 1 year Masters program in Computer Science from another university in the EU, also online. Within 2 years, his managed to get a UK bachelors and an EU Masters.

He goes to apply for a tech job at a small/medium size company.

Will employers look at his education and 'toss' his applicant aside if his not gone through the usual, 4 years of university education? Or will the experience play a major role and the degree really becomes just a tick?

 

Interesting. I have seen lots of good-looking foreign programs through this forum. But that is the reason I shy away from them.

Side note: paraphrasing, but the "coming to America is a step backwards" is mighty forward to say...

 

Do US employers have a bias toward foreign degrees? In my experience, only when they are held by very clearly US Born students.
I'm not talking about someone from New York who goes to McGill or University of Toronto. I'm talking about when a US student claims a degree from an obscure foreign institution. Even sketchier when the student does not speak the language of the country where that school is located.

If you have a degree from Oxford and not the slightest hint of an accent, hey, maybe you just wanted the best. If your family has been here so long that you can't even claim any knowledge of your ancestry pre-America and you walk into an interview with a degree from an Indian university, this is probably going to raise some questions. Now, if you explain that you grew up in India, hey, cool. Barring that the questions that come up in the interviewers mind are:

1. Is this candidate lying about having a degree they know we are less likely to verify?
2. In a country with entirely too many colleges, why would they go to this school?

Online education puts more schools at our fingertips and online education is quickly losing the stigma that was once associated with it. But as more people get degrees people tend to focus more on name.

 

I think there's some truth to what Neuhaus said. I think some of it is simply "I've never heard of that school . . . Is that a real school?" sort of mentality. I think there can be a kind of xenophobic affect, especially if the school is in an emerging nation. I think there continues to be a phobic reacation to the whole online/DL element with a lot of people. Clearly it's not an across the board reaction as some people are more knowledgeable or more open minded. Here's something to read on the subject

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattsymonds/2014/11/12/studying-abroad-boosts-your-job-prospects-or-does-it/#216c55b63650

 

OTOH, what would be said of accepting schools lacking a known track record?

 

This is a good point. A school might be decent (whatever that means) but if it's in some far-off location and you don't know anything about it then you might be quite unsure of what to think. It might be relatively simple for you or me to check up on a school because we're accustomed to doing it, know something about what to look for, but many people wouldn't really know where to start. In a competitive employment scenario with multiple applicants, an employer might simply scrap the resume of the person with the "exotic" degree.

 

this is the most recent QS world rankings



I'm sure we're all familiar with almost all of the universities in the top 20, except maybe, National University of Singapore, and Nanyang Technological University.

What if an american, who finished H.S decided to go to Nanyang Technological University.

Are they going to face a bigger challenge to find a job back home as compared to someone from a state university ?

 

My short answer is "Yes." My longer answer is "It depends." Longer still - That person will need to be very well prepared to give a nice clear explanation as to why they chose that school and why it's considered to be as good or better than a degree from another school such as you described.

 

Yeah, well as an immigrant, I think you're wrong here. Granted, most of my direct experience is here in Canada, but immigrants' credentials are routinely discounted. I have a number of friends working survival jobs, virtually everyone with a university degree. It's somewhat easier in technical fields; even there, I once knew an engineer with a PhD from Moscow Physics & Technology Institute (FYI, that's quite impressive; these guys are drilled on advanced calculus skills more than even #1 Lomonosov Moscow State U. students. It's brutal.) I didn't feel his credentials got anywhere near the respect they deserved.

 

I agree with "it depends".
My counter question is "Are non-US employers bias against US degrees?" And, the answer is "it depends". In my experience non-US employers in the US, at the higher echelons have a weak bias towards their "mother country". non-US employers outside of the US have a strong bias against US degrees.

 

There is, objectively, no difference between Colorado Technical University and American InterContinental University. Both RA. Both for-profit. Both owned by the same parent company. One frequently comes up with "Is that a REAL school?" questions and the other, generally, does not. CTU's name is generic enough that many people don't even think about it. AIU, on the other hand, has a non-standard school name that makes US centric individuals assume it's bogus.

Outside of the elite schools and your immediate region, most people don't develop a sense of what schools are good or mediocre or for what programs. Move within 10 miles of any school and you'll hear about how they are THE BEST in some area. Sometimes these are legitimate reputations. Often it's hometown bias. Marywood had a solid local reputation for years for their nursing and physician assistant programs. They touted their programs from mountaintops and every guidance counselor, if you wanted to be a nurse, would guide you there or to UScranton or College Misericordia (now Misericordia University). Then Marywood's nursing program, without any public warning, had its programmatic accreditation suspended. So, that local reputation didn't stack up to reality (they regained it soon after).

My point is that "I never heard of it" is the default. And that's fine as long as the school name doesn't raise any eyebrows.

To Kizmet's xenophobia point, I think that this is also a major contributor for some nations. UNISA is a solid school. But most people conflate "Africa" with "Corruption and Poverty." They don't know the geography, the history and they don't know that SA is perfectly capable of cranking out some perfectly legitimate degrees. So their cultural bias can hurt graduates of this, or any, African school. It's one of the reasons why, I suspect, I find many graduates of engineering programs from certain countries come here and knock out an RA Masters before pursuing jobs and others hit the market directly. China, Japan, Germany, India, England, they all seem to apply for the jobs directly with their existing credentials. No hesitation (and no issue). Engineers from South America, Africa or from more developing Asian countries (Vietnam, Cambodia etc) seem to all pursue US based graduate study and THEN apply for the same jobs. Just my observation, of course.

So yeah, I think it is cultural bias. We view US students who study overseas, unless its to a top school, as having gone there because they couldn't get into a US school. Nobody assumes you went to a Caribbean medical school because Harvard accepted you but you didn't want to deal with the harsh winters. Sadly, that same bias reflects on other fields. Our country is very US centric and it boggles the minds of many of our citizens why anyone would ever leave for education.

 

I agree, let's say that you are an American born in Arizona (non hispanic) but your CV has a BS from Central Nicaragua and an MBA from Empresarial. I don't think this CV would go very far.

 

Yes and no, many Canadians pursue degrees from the US, UK, France or Australia so it is not unusual to see people with credentials from the countries in good jobs. As for Russian credentials, I have worked with people with PhDs in CS and Math from Russian schools and we hire people to teach CS subjects with Russian credentials. However, things being equal, a Canadian credential would be preferred.

As some already mentioned, the problem comes mainly for people with credentials from Africa, Latin America, etc. I know a lady with a top degree from South Africa that had to do a second bachelors to get hired. Some people manage well with the African or Latin American credentials while others need to get a second degree from a local school, it all depends on the type of industry. If you are a self employed accountant or psychologist, it doesn't matter where you credential comes from as it is the license that would matter when someone tries to hire you. I have never asked my accountant where he got his degree but he is a CPA.

 

It is rare. I've seen one with my current employer (hiring employees for the company I work for). He had an MBA from a country he had no apparent connection with.

As a recruiter, all in, I saw probably 7-10 if we exclude Caribbean countries. . I was churning through a lot of applicants. So we're still talking about a low percentage of employees. They were almost entirely medical as I used to recruit physicians and nurses. I remember one guy, for instance, who was white as can be, red hair, American born and with an Irish surname and had a medical degree from Algeria. The hiring manager joked about him being unable to get into Ross and had to go all the way to Algeria.

But I've seen a lot of foreign born and educated employees in both roles. Nobody ever questions the candidate with a degree from the University of Addis Ababa provided the candidate appears to have come from Ethiopia.

Naturally, I don't mean to imply that these are actual trends. Just things I've seen on the HR road that give me cause to form a preliminary hypothesis about how people view foreign degrees in the U.S. And medical hiring is a different animal compared to unlicensed engineers. All jokes aside, if you have an active license, the questions largely cease. Where an unlicensed engineer for a position that doesn't require licensure is likely to either be scrutinized more or rejected in favor of a candidate with fewer questions surrounding their qualifications.

 

I wouldn't rule out interviews. I wouldn't even rule out getting a job with the degree.

There would be two obstacles to the degree being received well; if you don't speak spanish and if you've never visited Nicaragua.

See, if I hire someone with a degree from Central Nicaragua, I might have a reasonable expectation that you at least speak spanish. Even with a non-hispanic name, your mother might be Nicaraguan or maybe you anglicized it or maybe you're adopted or maybe you were just a white kid who wanted to study overseas. But if you don't even speak Spanish, this starts raising some questions.

If I ask "So what is Nicaragua like?" and you don't know, well, distance learning being what it is today, it's not unreasonable. But why CNU? Why not just pick an American school? Now I have questions.

That's what I mean by having a connection to the school's country. If you've clearly never been there, people get suspicious. If the school has a strange name people get suspicious.

 

Many of the UCN programs are with international schools that give programs in English. Many of these UCN degree holders are not Spanish speaking.
I believe that most people interested in this type of degrees are mainly for adjunct teaching, self employment or to satisfy a license (e.g. nursing). Most people feel that it does not make sense to spend 80K to be able to teach few classes as adjunct, the 5K PhD makes sense in this case.

 

I’m aware that UCN, and many other international schools, teach in English. That doesn’t change the fact that employers tend to view foreign schools differently when it’s a native speaker of that country’s language versus some American who passed up every American school to earn a degree overseas without speaking any language other than English.

I am also highly doubtful that the UCN PhD is as well received in US higher ed as you seem to feel. Please feel free to prove me wrong on that one. As for nurses, a US based RN would see no discernible advantage for earning a foreign Masters, and if you’re talking about earning a first credential toward an RN license, I cannot imagine a scenario where a US based student earns any credential from UCN that reasonably qualifies them as an RN upon their return to the US.

 

There's a whole spectrum, and 'tick the box' is just one end of it. If it's just a 'tick the box', then I expect that any university will do, foreign or domestic, provided that the employer is confident that it isn't a mill.

The other end of the spectrum might be a professor to anchor a particular specialty in a university department, teach graduate classes in that specialty, head up research activities and so on. Or a biotech company that's interested in a particular research area and wants to find somebody who has worked with, and comes with the recommendation of, big names in that research area.

In the more selective case, I don't think that American employers will be biased against foreign universities just because they are foreign universities, but they will want the university to have a satisfactory academic reputation in the subject they are interested in.

That's not "xenophobia", it's just prudent common sense.

 

One of my old professors was an American with a PhD from the University of Leeds. Nobody thought any the worse of it. It seemed to be universally accepted as the equivalent of an American PhD.

But this professor was regularly asked what it was like studying in the UK. So an American would have to be ready for that question. If they reply that it was a DL program, the next question would probably be why they elected to study by DL at that university rather than attending one of the local B&M programs. Replying 'it was cheaper' probably won't impress many people, even if it's a major consideration. But saying that the foreign university offered a program with some unique academic features might be more persuasive.