Record high number of applications for recognition of foreign education
NOKUT received in total over 7500 applications for general recognition in 2015. This is an increase of more than 15 percent from 2014. The highest number of applicants have their educational background from Poland.
– NOKUT is experiencing a significant increase in the number of applications for recognition of foreign eduaction. We wish to do our part in making it easier for candidates with foreign education to utilize their competence in the Norwegian labour market. We are very pleased that more and more apply for recognition of their education, says Terje Mørland, Director General of NOKUT.
Like in the previous years, Poland has the highest number of applications, up 10 percent since 2014. Next in line are Lithuania, Serbia and The Philippines.
Syria was the fifth greatest country in 2015, with a significant increase in the number of applications each quarter. NOKUT has done continuous evaluations of the reliability of Syrian educational documentation. So far, we have considered the documentation to be sufficiently reliable, enabling NOKUT to follow regular procedures in these evaluations. NOKUT has also seen an increase in the number of applications from other refugee countries such as Eritrea, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.
NOKUT issued just above 4000 decisions on bachelor degree equivalence, a little under 2000 decisions on master degree equivalence, 29 on doctoral level and just above 350 educations were recognized as equivalent to a university college graduate degree. The highest number of applications were within the fields of business and management and engineering, both subject areas with over 1500 applications each. They were followed by health work, teacher education and natural sciences.
– NOKUT expects that the increase in the number of applicants will continue in 2016, maybe even by 25 percent compared to last year. We will see more people with qualifications from refugee countries in 2016, especially from Syria. Although the government budget has helped us strengthen our resources, we might have a prolonged case processing time compared to in 2015, concludes Mørland.
The case processing time in 2015 was in average 1,6 months, which is slightly higher than in 2014.
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