The manual is a transparency and recognition tool for admissions officers in the Nordic and Baltic countries.
The manual aims to present guidance on recognition of all higher education qualifications and to provide a basis for more automatic and smooth recognition of qualifications from the Nordic-Baltic region.
By navigating in the manual admissions officers will be able to find relevant information as a basis for their decisions on admission to programmes within their own higher education institution.
The content of the manual
In the overview of qualifications you will find recommendations on recognition of qualifications within the Nordic-Baltic region, in the form of a table showing which national qualifications are comparable in level. Applicants who hold the qualifications mentioned in the manual should be eligible for access to programmes at the next level within the region.
By access it is meant that the qualifications fulfill the general requirements for access to studies at the next level, while of course the decision on admission and whether applicants meet the specific admission requirements for admission will remain with higher education institutions.
However, this manual provides the institutions with recommendations on the level of the qualifications and thereby serves as a valuable tool when determining whether applicants fulfill the general access requirements.
In the overview of qualifications, there is a table with qualifications, which have been evaluated by the project team to be of comparable level and thus eligible to apply for admission to the next level educational systems of the participating countries.
For each country you will find information on the higher education system, including types of recognised higher education institutions and information on the types of higher education qualifications including information on ECTS credits, degree titles in English and the national language, qualification frameworks level and the right to access to the next level of study.
Furthermore, you will find information under each country module on upper secondary qualifications giving access to higher education studies in each country. It is recommended that all upper secondary qualifications mentioned under each country module should give general access to undergraduate study programmes within the region.
Further details on each qualification type can be found by clicking the name of the qualification. This includes information on defined learning outcomes, EQF level, thesis requirements, more specific information on degree titles, etc.
Background of the project
The Nordic-Baltic recognition manual is an offspring of the pathfinder project on automatic recognition of qualifications initiated by the European Commission and endorsed by the Bologna Ministers in Bucharest in 2012. In the 2015 Yerevan Communiqué the Bologna Ministers furthermore committed themselves to ensuring “that qualifications from other EHEA countries are automatically recognized at the same level as relevant domestic qualifications”.
The pathfinder group on automatic recognition recommended regional cooperation within recognition as a stepping stone towards the final achievement of automatic recognition within the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). The Nordic-Baltic recognition manual is a response to this recommendation.
The definition of automatic recognition agreed on by the pathfinder group is: “Automatic recognition of a degree leads to the automatic right of an applicant holding a qualification of a certain level to be considered for entry to a programme of further study in the next level in any other EHEA country (access).”
In other words, higher education institutions should accept the level of a comparable European qualifications automatically as making the holder eligible to apply for admission to further study (right to access), while the final decision on admission and whether the applicants meet the specific admission requirements is solely within the authority of the higher education institutions.
Project partners
The Nordic-Baltic admission manual has been developed in a partnership among the central recognition authorities in each country, i.e. the ENIC/NARIC offices.
The project partners in alphabetical order are:
- Academic Information Centre (Latvian ENIC/NARIC)
- Estonian ENIC/NARIC Office
- Centre for Quality Assessment in Higher Education (Lithuanian ENIC/NARIC)
- Danish Agency for Higher Education and Science (Danish ENIC/NARIC office)
- ENIC/NARIC Iceland
- Finnish National Agency for Education (ENIC-NARIC Finland)
- NOKUT – Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills (Norwegian ENIC/NARIC office)
- Swedish Council for Higher Education (Swedish ENIC/NARIC office)