A major predicament is currently being experienced within the field of international credential evaluation. Extensive delays are plaguing both internal departments and external agencies, leading to hastily-arranged workarounds and exacerbating the bleed-out of trained evaluators.

The revision of admissions policies as a result of the pandemic has caused the number of international applications to skyrocket. Foreign applications have increased by 63% from last year's numbers. [1] This in turn has led to significant workload increases that many services have not scaled to meet. Go to any number of evaluation service homepages and you’ll find timetables have expanded to handle demand.

In such situations, newer evaluators (not yet deft in handling fluctuating caseloads) bailout and the more-experienced senior evaluators are left to shoulder the burden. As the problem worsens, even these veterans are tempted to give up, leading to a “brain drain” in our occupation.

What steps can be undertaken to combat this issue? Based on my extensive experience supervising the evaluation process, the recommendations that follow could make a significant impact in lessening the strain we're all facing:

To start off, a preventive approach: increase efforts to promote early applications among the client base. Most external services tend to leave such efforts strictly to the institutions, but the ballooning number of last-minute requests compels us to perform outreach with such a message.

Services should audit their policies and procedures. Even two or three small changes can save hours a week when assessed in the aggregate.

Make electronic evaluations default for all clients and institutions. Current figures show that we are at the precipice of the majority of workers in the U.S. going paperless. [2] Nonetheless, any institution adamant about requiring hard copy reports can be exempted at the discretion of the evaluation agency.

Older services modeled on traditional, face-to-face operations must be willing to offer fully-remote positions in order to attract the best candidates. Evaluation agencies that have not yet devised remote workflow procedures are already at a competitive disadvantage. This being a field where workload fluctuates dramatically, giving evaluators some degree of flexibility in their day-to-day operations can alleviate stress on their end. The people who excel at this job are those who are already inclined to exercise autonomy and self-discipline, even in WFH environments.

As another method of combating the mammoth workload, internal and external teams can diversify between full-time and part-time positions. Ideally, this should be structured around the peaks and lulls of the yearly admissions cycles. A major factor in preventing attrition of trained, experienced evaluators is the ability to offer a consistent and manageable workload year-round.

One strategy which is already widely-adopted and should remain in practice: Internal evaluators can negotiate deals with external evaluation services to offload excess evaluations as needed.

To summarize, the delay problem can be tackled through the following:

- Promote a culture of early applying on the part of clients 
- Audit work process to find opportunities for streamlining 
- Digital evaluations should be the default method of delivery 
- Offer fully-remote positions 
- Strategically implement part-time work to line up with peak cycles 
- Use external services as needed to process excess evaluations

These suggestions can be implemented as-is or can be ruminated upon as a springboard to further discussion.

Juan Garibaldi has 15 years of experience as a credential evaluator and works as Director of Credential Evaluations at Veri Once.

[1] Barros, Aline. US Colleges Report Rise in Foreign Student Applications. VOA, 29 Sept. 2022. <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/us-colleges-report-rise-in-foreign-student-applications/6738442.html">https://www.voanews.com/a/us-colleges-report-rise-in-foreign-student-applications/6738442.html</a>

[2] Ascott, Emma. Is It Possible for the Future of Work to Be Paperless? Allwork.Space, 22 Jan. 2022. <a href="https://allwork.space/2022/01/is-it-possible-for-the-future-of-work-to-be-paperless/">https://allwork.space/2022/01/is-it-possible-for-the-future-of-work-to-be-paperless/</a>