Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. The VAE or Validation des Acquis de l''Expérience is a procedure that allows any French educational institution to grant degrees partly or totally on work experience. A porfolio of the applicant''s achievements and work experience is presented to a committee at the educational institution. The committee will then decide if the documents presented in the portfolio show work that merits partial credit toward a degree, a degree, or no credit towards the degree at all.A French law of August 23, 1985 authorized people with work experience to ask for a Diploma equivalence. It was mostly for vocational degrees. The great revolution came with the Loi de Modernisation Sociale (Social Modernization) dated January 17, 2002 that specifically authorizes Universities and other "établissements d''Enseignemernt supérieurs" (Institutions of Higher Education) to grant theclassical original degrees (BTS, DEUG, Licence, Maîtrise, DES, DESS, Master, Mastaire, Doctorat, etc.) based only on the work experience of the candidate. The required minimum of work experience was lowered from five to three years.