The Canadian immigration literature seems to regard employers with a hint of disapproval. For example, a recent survey talks about "the failure to recognize foreign credentials" as if employers and others are, for some unaccountable reason, not able to recognize a credential when it's staring them in the face.
I've just spent the last couple of hours trying to recognize foreign educational credentials, and it's hard. Really hard.
The minimum admission requirements for an MA in Economics at most Canadian schools are advanced undergraduate microeconomics, macroeconomics and econometrics with a grade of B+ or better, plus math.
When I pick up a foreign transcript, it just lists the courses: Microeconomics. Macroeconomics. Econometrics.
A student who has taken two or three "microeconomics" or "macroeconomics" courses at a university in Afghanistan or Bangladesh might be well-prepared for a Canadian MA. Lots of these universities have faculty who are trained in internationally-recognized universities, including a good number of Canadian ones. Presumably those professors teach mainstream economics just as well as I do.
But, on the other hand, the international student might not be well prepared. Much of the world has little time for what mainstream economists call theory, and offers undergraduate economics degrees that are more similar to a Canadian Bachelor of Commerce than a BA in Economics. That doesn't mean it's worse. It just means the student with that degree is likely to struggle in a Canadian economics MA program. The "advanced macroeconomics" course on an international transcript might be closer to a Canadian intermediate macro course. Also, curricula change slowly - how many universities are still teaching central planning? Unreconstructed Keynesianism? I have no idea.
Why don't I just search for the information on-line? Because course syllabi are almost never available. There is no way of identifying the professor responsible for microeconomics, let alone contacting that individual.
To some extent I rely on a university's reputation and my own experience. After a few years, one gets to know the larger and more prestigious international universities, and becomes accustomed to the different grading norms: for example, 70 is an A in most Indian universities, but a C in many Chinese ones.
At the same time, it's far from ideal to make admission decisions on criteria such as "I have a friend who teaches at National Taiwan University, it must be okay." It seems grossly unfair to penalize or priviledge all students from a particular institution just because I have some gut feeling that it's an "easy" or "rigorous", a "bad" or "good" program.
It might be acceptable to make these kind of judgements if we had some records of how students from different universities, or with different undergraduate backgrounds, perform at the MA level. We have never generated these statistics - it would be a huge undertaking, and it is not clear how we would use that information in any event. Should we, say, subtract 10% from the GPA of everyone who graduated from a university with a poor track-record, add 10% to the GPA of everyone who graduated from a university with a better track-record? That doesn't seem right to me either.
Universities, however, have an enormous advantage over employers when it comes to recognizing foreign educational credentials: we can allow people to fail. If I make a bad call - admit a student who can't handle the program - it's somewhat painful for everyone directly involved in the experience, but it still generates revenue for the university. An employee who fails to perform, however, is potentially very costly for an employer.
Universities also have more flexibility than employers. Carleton has a qualifying year program for students who do not have a strong background in economics, which allows them to prove they have the abilities to enter the MA program. There is also an extended MA programs for students who might lack just one or two key course requirements.
I do sometimes wonder about the value of post-graduate education as a human capital investment strategy - but it's a great immigration program. I have a lot of practice reading foreign transcripts, so my assessment of an undergraduate economics degree is much better than an average immigration official's. Plus people who come to Canada as students enter the country at a younger age, and have more opportunities to assimilate and learn English -- which contributes strongly to immigrant success.
Still, anyone who thinks that recognizing foreign educational credentials is an easy business should spend an afternoon deciphering transcripts from a dozen or so different countries.