Globalization of Foreign Academic Credential Placement Recommendations for Graduate Study in the United States, 1932-201

Foreign educational credential assessment is responsive to assessors' social, economic, and cultural stimuli. Academic institutions, industries, and governmental bodies treat placement specialists' recommendations as signals of cross-cultural productive capacity, giving significance to the methodology of foreign education-system analysis. A conceptual framework incorporating globalization, internationalization, massification, and marketization (GLIMM) helps explain how and why paradigms have shifted. GLIMM forces can help explain changes in international higher education and illustrate the fluidity of education in an evolving global society.;This study employs a naturalistic qualitative research design with a two-step analysis of the target resource documents, constructivist typological study and substance analysis. The study then asks (a) what information academic credential placement recommendations offer, (b) if and how those styles have changed, and (c) if the forces of massification and marketization resulting from globalization and internationalization inform those changes. The objective of the analysis was to understand authorial intent for the placement recommendations, use of the placement recommendations, and the consequences of authors changing over time.;This study examines 1932-2015 primary placement recommendation resource materials from all global regions and potential relationships between those materials and the increasing number of international students in the U.S. Also examined in this study are the impact of economics on international student recruitment and the evolving purpose of education through the late-20th and early-21st centuries. In the absence of regulatory oversight, HEI leaders have needed increasingly to understand national trends regarding use of credential evaluation services, in-house credentialing and necessary resources for success, and impact of inconsistent credential evaluation on fairness in enrollment and admission.;The outcomes of this study are relevant to higher education leaders in that they address a common blind spot at many HEIs and challenge accreditation bodies to examine policies and adopt best practices. The researcher cataloged (a) the kinds of information and placement recommendations generally provided, (b) why the information and recommendations were credible or non-credible, (c) changes in this information during the time period under investigation, (d) if and how these changes can be linked to GLIMM, and (e) how in-house credential evaluators have responded.