Hi everyone,
I was wondering if any of you had a similar experience. I am a Dutch-born Chinese who has obtained a Master's of Arts in Social Sciences at the VU University of Amsterdam in 2004 before relocating to HK.
Here, I've had my degrees assessed recently by the HK Council for Accreditation of Academic & Vocational Qualifications, as I needed it for further educational purposes. The result of the assessment was that my educational qualification meets the standards here of a local Bachelor Degree. Ough, so my Master's degree has been reduced to a Bachelor with this result (and I needed to pay for this assessment as well). Of course I delved deeper into this and asked them how they came to this conclusion. They responded that the local Bachelor degrees and other Bachelor degrees in English- speaking countries take 4 years of study?! (Normally a Bachelor in Holland takes 3 years). But from hearsay I've heard that this is something from the recent past and that a Bachelor's degree here was three years as well a few years back. Has anyone had a similar experience? Has it got anything to do with that they don't know the Dutch standards of education well enough, or that they prefer degrees obtained at an English-speaking country? Are Bachelor's degrees from English-speaking countries usually 4 years? And what shall I do? Is the only thing that I can do just to accept the verdict?