Converting experience into a degree.
Voted in 2002, the French system of "validation des acquis de l'expérience" (or VAE) allows anybody in active professional life to get a validation of what he acquired through his experience, particularly professional (but also benevolent), in order to obtain a degree or a certificate. Contrarily to previous or foreign systems, the result officially seeked is the issuance of a real degree (complete), not a part of a degree or some partial " credits". The system is also open to foreigners, like formal indoors training or by distance learning, and free-taking exams.
Without bureaucratic heaviness, without file-constitution fees, without fixed dates and complex standard forms, the Université Multiculturelle Internationale proposes you to get a free evaluation, by simply sending your curriculum vitae ("résumé") with the title of the degree you want and the main reason, to the Evaluation service.
First university to apply the VAE system for accreditation of prior learning, UMI was also the first francophone university to issue a diploma supplement, as early as 2003, and even when the degree was acquired through accreditation of prior learning.
The enthusiastic campaign launched on a big scale by the government at the opportunity of the adoption of the so-called law of social modernisation, which instituted the VAE accreditation of prior learning system, immediately created big hopes, finally disappointed by the restrictive legal system of "validation des acquis de l'expérience" (for the legal texts click here). In order to meet these unsatisfied expectations the Université Multiculturelle Internationale decided to go further than the governmental dispositive:
it proposes accreditation of prior learning also to people who are not in active professional life,
it applies accreditation of prior learning also for competencies that are not a result of experience,
it proceeds to accreditation of prior learning also for unfinished higher studies,
it uses accreditation of prior learning also for personal knowledge that is not competencies.
In 2003, the Eyrolles Editions asked the Rector of the UMI to write the first pratical guide of VAE, for which the UMI was a reference since the 2002 law, as the first university to apply the VAE process for accreditation of prior learning.
Université Multiculturelle Internationale