My recent talk with a student counsellor from an American university was a pretty bracing engagement. It was all about objectives, needs and ability to pay with a swift follow up email on what I needed to do next. What I had anticipated as a low-key chat about study options became as clinical and unnerving as an exploratory colonoscopy.
One outcome was a suggestion that I really needed to get my academic qualifications verified in the US. My initial indignation was around the fact that I have the certificates and academic transcripts for all the higher degrees. They have been accepted as evidence for two senior roles at UK universities so it was a surprise to find that they would not cut the mustard if I chose to apply to a US university.
The certificates are with a small batch of papers which I keep in a hard-backed envelope and will leave the house with me in the event of a fire. Leafing through the envelope I was surprised but relieved to see that I still have the certificate from Pontins Holiday Camp confirming that I swam a width when I was eleven years old. I even have the scraps of paper which confirm my sub-optimal performance at ‘O’ and ‘A’ level
It’s fair to say that I was not the most dedicated scholar during my school years and ‘O’ really did mean ‘Ordinary’ while ‘A’ was probably shorthand for ‘Average at best’. I also have four CSEs which my peers would reflect stands for Completely Second-rate Education. I am still slightly stung by the comment on one school record that says ‘always did the minimum with least effort’ but realise, looking back, that it was probably true.
Of course, we are all familiar with stories about the rather underwhelming academic record of Einstein and Churchill. But the former’s minor troubles in French and the Humanities were more than overshadowed by the fact that he mastered differential and integral calculus before he was fifteen. Even the latter’s patchy school record can be forgiven for his 1953 Nobel Prize for Literature demonstrating “his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.”
I can’t claim either as inspiration but by my late twenties, having been thoroughly schooled in the meaning of discipline and application by the retailers at Tesco and ASDA, I hauled myself out of my academic tailspin. Eleven years of studying at a distance and paying out of my own pocket schooled me in submitting essays at 3am in the morning and posting them from motorway service stations, airports and even foreign capitals. Six years of summer schools educated me in how surprisingly feral middle-aged people can become when let off the leash with people they will never see again.
After all that effort it was very satisfying to get my degrees which made it all the more perplexing to realise that the certificates and my honest demeanour were not going to be enough. I guess that every computer now has the software to knock up a reasonable copy that might allow someone to substantiate claims of having a really high IQ and a big brain. Or they might simply choose to make the claim while ensuring that their academic records never saw the light of day.
My diligent counsellor advised me that the best thing to do was have my qualifications reviewed by World Education Services (WES) or a similar service. For $150 dollars they would confirm to an American university or an employer something that the University awarding my degree already knew. I’m keeping the bits of paper in the hard-backed envelope but have a sense of sadness that their purpose is almost entirely lost.
I chose to go with WES because it sounds like a real person which, I suspect, is one of the reasons that Alexa seems to have become more popular and talked about than Siri. SIRI is derived from Speech Interpretation & Recognition Interface but is also a real name in Scandinavia with the meaning ‘beautiful victory’. Given that not many speak Scandinavian (and even fewer speak Swahili where ‘siri’ means secret) I’d guess that this is lost on most of the world.
While Alexa is a made-up name it has sufficient echoes of standard first names, male and female, to sound familiar. Alexander the Great, Sir Alex Ferguson (who is considered the greatest after winning the Champions League, Premier League and FA Cup in a single season) and Alex Kingston are among the better known. It is pleasing to note in terms of new words I have learnt today that Alexandra Smirnoff (1838–1913) was a Finnish pomologist – the branch of botany that studies and cultivates fruit.
Returning to the task in hand I can report that the entanglement with WES and my alma mater, the Open University, has been less than perfect so far. WES has quite exacting demands in terms of material being sent under seal and signature and the Open University form making the request does not allow me to specify this in detail. I am left hoping, without expectation, that these organisations are so familiar with the process that it will all work out.
The system seems to have largely been established for those pursuing careers or qualifications in academia. It’s an opaque world which institutions would do well to open up by making transcripts available through secure digital systems for free. These should be available to any institution or employer, anywhere in the world, authorised by the student to access them.