My eQuals is an online service that allows universities to issue secure digital records so that the recipients of those records (students and graduates) can access and share them with third parties. My eQuals will extend the current paper-based practices to include verified digital documents that are managed through a secure and trusted source.

Digital transcripts, degree certificates, Australian Higher Education Graduation Statements (AHEGS) and other official documents are available to students and graduates of the universities that have implemented the My eQuals-platform.

My eQuals offers significant benefits to students, graduates, universities, employers and other recipients of credentials documents.

In general terms, My eQuals will eliminate the potential for document fraud and assure the integrity and security of qualifications from Australian and New Zealand Universities.

For student and graduates, My eQuals will enhance student mobility by providing anywhere, anytime access and the ability to share digital documents with employers, universities and other parties.

For universities, employers and other recipients, My eQuals will streamline the production, management and verification of credentials documentation.

Receiving organisations will also be able to rely on the authenticity of the documents and be less concerned about potential fraud.
This link describes the My eQuals benefits in more detail.

My eQuals is a result of a collaborative initiative involving the 46 participating universities.

My eQuals is a shared platform that is owned by the participants and the digital documents that are accessible through the platform are provisioned by the participants themselves.

The My eQuals initiative is led by Higher Ed Services (the professional services arm of Universities Australia) and supports a global statement known as the Groningen Declaration . The primary goal of the declaration is to enable, “Citizens world-wide [to] be able to consult and share their authentic educational data with whomever they want, whenever they want, wherever.”

Forty-six universities across Australia and New Zealand are planning to implement the My eQuals platform in 2017-2018, providing this service to more than 95% of the student population.

The initiative is widely supported by national leaders, including by the Australian Minister for Education and Training, the Department of Education and Training, Universities Australia, Universities New Zealand, the Tertiary Education and the Quality and Standards Agency.

Similar digital student record platforms exist in the USA, Europe and China.  The software (Digitary) that is the basis of My eQuals is in use in many higher education institutions in the United Kingdom. Currently, more than a million digital student credentials have been verified by employers, local government, universities and credential evaluators around the world.

The 46 Australian and New Zealand universities that are participating in the My eQuals service have been provided with a means to issue digitally certified documents and data to their students and graduates through the My eQuals platform.

Students and graduates can, in turn, share their academic records with third parties online, controlling who can see their records and for how long.

Please refer to the “Help” section on the My eQuals login page for further details of the specific workings of the platform.

Employers and other recipients should also refer to the “Receiving documents” page for details.

 

Please refer to the Receiving Documents page.

No – My eQuals is not an enquiry system that allows you to search a database of records. Instead, My eQuals enables students and graduates to generate an access token, which they can send to recipients of their choice (for example, universities and employers) via email. Recipients use these tokens to verify the related student records online.

My eQuals employs advanced, long-term cryptographic validity to ensure that the security of digital records. Each record’s cryoptographic security is periodically “upgraded” without any manual intervention required. This ensures that records stored in My eQuals have up-to-date cryptographic protection, even long after they have been issued.

It depends on the issuing institution’s policy, which can be accessed from here. Some documents, such as status letters, expire after a few months or years. However, degree certificates and final transcripts are life-long documents and never expire.

At the moment, universities generally provide physical copies of credentials documents free at graduation, but at a cost at other times.

When My eQuals is in place, individual universities will determine their own charges, which may vary from university-to-university.

Universities are likely to continue to issue physical Degree Certificates/ Testamurs on graduation. Outside graduation and for other documents, universities will increasingly move to digital documents. Employers and other recipients will also rely increasingly on digital documents over physical ones.

The future availability of physical documents will depend on individual university policy. Please contact the issuing university directly or through the myequals.edu.au or myequals.ac.nz websites to check.