Tertiary Qualifications

Tertiary providers offer ten programme levels related to the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) to meet a range of learners’ needs. These vary from short courses to postgraduate study and research. There are no fixed divisions between the types of courses offered by different types of provider.

International comparability of tertiary qualifications

Bachelors degrees from New Zealand tertiary education providers are comparable overall to:

• British Bachelors (Ordinary) degrees
• Australian Bachelors degrees
• US Bachelors degrees.

New Zealand Bachelors degrees are recognised for enrolment in postgraduate programmes at universities throughout the world, subject to the normal grade and subject specialisation requirements.

Australia and New Zealand have declared mutual recognition of vocational education and training qualifications.

New Zealand is a member of the Lisbon Qualification Recognition Convention. This means that New Zealand qualifications are more easily recognised in each of the 50 Lisbon convention countries. The Lisbon Convention is recognised as setting international best practice for assessing and comparing qualifications from around the world. Along with New Zealand, signatories to the Lisbon Convention include the UK, France, Germany, Italy, USA, Canada and Australia.