How are foreign degrees perceived in the US?

The subject kind of says it all. What kind of response do potential employers have to a degree that originates from England, South Africa, Korea, Japan or Australia?

I'm just assuming that there has to be some kind of discrimination unless it's specifically from a place like Cambridge or Oxford. Is it worth it to do a foreign DL course?

 

The biggest pain is convincing people that UK universities aren't American, don't work like American universities, and have a different mindset. The most obvious example is that UK universities don't issue transcripts -- this causes, uhm, problems.

Jon Porter (PhD Nottingham)
still trying to convince search committees about transcripts . . . or the lack thereof

 

The only hard evidence I have is my seven years' experience with the Heriot-Watt MBA in the US and Canada. During that time, we had more than 1,000 cases in which an employee sought approval, payment, or both from his/her employer. More than 98% of these were successful: most of them automatic, because the university appeared in appropriate directories and list. But there were a few hundred cases where further communication was needed, ranging from a simple explanatory letter to months of interaction. Most of the 2% failures were companies that did not accept distance degrees, not ones that did not accept non-US degrees.

So I guess one factor in choosing a school in a different country could be the school's willingness (or their local agent, if they have one) to help out with this acceptance process.

 

My experiece has been that it realy depends on the basic industry you are working in. My background, which is in engineering and mining, is in general much more receptive.

The mining industry being rather globalby oriented and also rather small in actual number of people, pays more attention to what you know. Most mining schools have faculty from all over.

Engineering as a whole is less receptive to foriegn (sp?) degrees, but not by much.

In fact, based on this I am currently evaluating several option for a PhD which includes a strong look at the Oz schools, particularly U of Queensland. They seem to be very recieptive to students that wqork away from the campus and even have a specfic form for applying for this status. They do require about 9 weeks (min) on campus during your program, but this can be spent over several years.

I am getting ready to contact an old aquiantence (sp?) who works in one of the Cooperative Research Centres which sponsers graduate students at several different univeristies.

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M. C. (Mike) Albrecht, PE

 

As a matter of policy, my company does not reimburse tuition for DL degrees. However, in my case, I was able to convince our HR department that I am pursuing a limited-residency doctorate.

 

I am from UK but got my degrees in US. I do not know of any employer related problems, but I know 3 people (2 from UK and 1 from RAS)who ran into problems with academia because their degrees were 3 year degrees and not 4 year degrees. All were eventually accepted into master programs at Cal State U schools.