Personnel Screening Helpdesk conducted a study of the degree verification practices of major universities in the world. Out of the 50 sampled universities, 33 of them have outsourced their verification services to third party agents. These agents included the following:
- National Student Clearinghouse (“NSC”) (in the United States)
- Higher Education Degree Datacheck (“HEDD”) (in the United Kingdom)
- AuraData (in Canada)
- China Academic Degrees & Graduate Education Development Center (“CDGDC”) (in China)
The remaining universities handle the verification requests directly.
The average verification fee charged by third party agents increased from USD 17.20 in 2015 to USD 19.57 per request in 2016. Most notably, during the year NSC increased its basic verification fee from USD 9.95 to USD 12.5 per request. Schools which increased the surcharge during the year include Duke University (from zero to USD 5), University of Michigan (from USD 5.5 to USD 7.5) and University of Washington (from USD 15 to USD 16).
