TRACE: TRANS REGIONAL ACADEMIC MOBILITY AND CREDENTIAL EVALUATION

International academic mobility, sanctiòned by an increasing number of international, regional, and bilateral agreements, has been gaining in importance over the last thirty years. This increase in mobility has accentuated the need for more and better information about institutions, systems, and diplomas of higher education; however, the mass of information required has, at the same time, become increasingly difficult to handle. With this problem in mind, a group of international higher education experts came together in June 1987 to investigate the possibilities of cooperating and of sharing information through the establishment of compatible regional data banks to be linked together in a network. Thus TRACE ‐‐ Trans Regional Academic Mobility and Credit Evaluation — was born. So far, the experts have held four meetings aimed at shaping and at giving substance to their project. Even though the initiative was taken by experts from Europe and North America, the intention is to create a truly interregional system of co‐operation in the sharing of data. To stress this interregional aspect, the suggestion was made that the International Association of Universities (IAU) in Paris should act as a clearing house for the network. The experience of IAU in the collection and the dissemination of information on higher education throughout the world goes back to 1950. Its International Universities Bureau (IUB), which is currently undergoing computerization, is planning to create three databases: an institutional database, a bibliographical database, and a database devoted to, research on higher education.