International recruitment agents can build back better.
While grossly uneven, the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines introduces a replacement chapter within the pandemic in terms of worldwide scholar mobility.
Many scholars, and university personnel who strive to support them, have grounds for cautious confidence that overseas study and travel requirements will continue improving.
International student recruitment professionals, for their part, are not any longer witnessing a severe downturn in enrolments; that shoe has already dropped. Alternatively, those fortunate enough to maintain withdrawn repetition now have the chance to see what a return to a ‘new normal‘ might appear as if.
Pre-pandemic, international student recruitment agencies played a crucial role in many universities’ strategic international enrolment efforts, facilitating overseas study for many thousands of scholars annually.
During the pandemic, these companies worked overtime, seeking support and updates from their institutional partners and sharing an equivalent with students.
But making this work was much more difficult. Articles advise that the pandemic propelled many agencies to reduce staff professions, with some running out of business altogether as their income fell.
Other agencies were forced or decided to use the chance to form changes to their business models, with many moving entirely or a minimum of mostly online. New agencies with entirely new models emerged at an equivalent time, and therefore, the agent aggregator became a way more visible entity.
How will international university departments engage with international student recruitment agencies advancing as further progress contending COVID is made? Will travel restrictions make them more hooked on agents to conduct in-person international student outreach?
Will the prevailing compensation model – per-capita commissions, paid to agents as long as a referred student enrols – make this recruitment method more appealing to institutions that find themselves under unprecedented financial pressure?
And will the compensation model change as universities increasingly compete with one another for the eye of international students and as agencies become ever more critical to institutional enrolment success?
How will agents engage with students going forward? The pandemic dramatically accelerated a trend previously underway: students obtaining more information and advice ever virtually, via a profusion of online channels.
Will brick and mortar agency storefronts go the way of the dinosaur, with owners concluding that the sole thanks to surviving, if not thrive, is to meet still students where they’re because the saying goes – namely online?
And how will the expansion of aggregators change the connection between the university and prospective student?
These and lots of other unanswered questions abound.
Taking stock
A growing body of research and best practice documentation has begun shining light on the hitherto opaque activity of international student recruitment agencies, how universities work with them, and how governments and other stakeholders exercise oversight.
One of the main salient conclusions one can draw from this work is the smallest amount surprising: that practice varies, often considerably, across the planet.
United Kingdom
In the UK, there are no official national data on the utilization of agents. Still, a recent survey by the British Universities‘ International Liaison Association suggests that 45% to 55% of international students had used the services of an education agent. Agents have collectively made a contribution of £11.88 billion (US$16.8 billion) to the united kingdom economy.
While there’s wide recognition of the advantage of using agents, managers have continued to specific concerns over potential risks related to outsourcing a key function of the institution, particularly over the utilization of sub-agents and lack of transparency in communicating the agency relationship to student clients.
The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education’s lead, Strengthening and Improving the Experience of International Scholars within the UK, encourages universities to form up-to-date lists of designated agents public and explain to scholars that agents offer a service that they’re funded, providers.
There is insufficient data that either recommendation is uniformly complied with. While the United Kingdom’s consumer protection body for scholars, the Office for scholars, has raised questions on the role of agents in its review of university admissions, it’s yet to report on the matter or go as far on the issue as to any formal guidance or regulation.
United States
In the US, university engagement of international student recruitment agents is a smaller amount common than in other leading international student destinations. In current years, however, more US institutions have chosen the method.
The National Association for school Admission Counseling found that, as of 2017-18, 36% of respondents to its Admission Trends Survey reported using commission-based agents, with another 27% actively considering doing so.
Policy changes and best practices advanced by the association have contributed to the present growth, as did the 2008 formation of the American International Recruitment Council, a non-profit standards development organization.
More lately, the US State Department’s Education – a system of overseas advising hubs – modified a long-standing policy that prevented its personnel from colluding with recruitment agents in support of what’s inferred as a more comprehensive strategy.
Canada
In Canada, international student enrolment has tripled over the past decade thanks to concerted efforts by institutions and favourable government policies regarding pathways to permanent residency, both aided by a relatively unwelcoming environment south of its border.
This increase in student demand has almost surely been boosted by a corresponding growth in international student recruitment agent activity, though more research is required to detail this claim.
The Role of Education Agents in Canada’s Education Systems, commissioned by Canada’s Council of Ministers of Education, may be a superb report. Still, it was published in 2013 when international enrollment in Canada was a small fraction of its current.
Australia and New Zealand
Australia and New Zealand have an extended diary within the use of agents. Pre-COVID-19, both countries relied heavily on agent-based recruitment. In Australia, three in every four fresh international scholars were agent-recruited in 2018. In New Zealand, approximately half of all fresh international scholars at universities have retained with an agent.
Australia and New Zealand have also attempted to steer the way education institutions work with agents by introducing legally binding agent standards with a good array of requirements. However, the extent to which these standards are ready to protect international students’ rights has been questioned.
China
In China, the leading country of origin of international students in Australia, New Zealand, the US and therefore the UK, agency organizations, just like the Beijing Overseas Study Service Association, are industry-led forums for professional development and best practice promotion.
In Hong Kong, similar attempts have directed consumer protections, with the Hong Kong Consumer Council lately publishing an article on “Overseas Education Advisory Services“, highlighting an inadequacy of safeguards for scholars.
India
India has also witnessed industry-led efforts to advance good practice, a prominent example being the Association of Australian Education Representatives in India. And like China, India has recently begun emerging as a destination country in its title, not merely a ‘sender‘ of international students.
Akin to their Western complements, Indian and Chinese universities join international scholars recruitment agents, but this activity has not been well examined.
Similarly, international student mobility between countries that are neither leading receivers nor senders of scholars – and agents’ roles in fostering it – has received comparatively scant attention from policy-makers and researchers.
Who is aggregating who?
The ‘new‘ phenomenon of super-agents or agent aggregators has recently gotten tons of attention in both the tutorial and investment press. The truth, however, is that agent aggregators are nothing new.
Big agencies, notably in China and India, have always worked with smaller agencies, funnelling student applications conveniently and partaking in commissions. Universities have generally neglected sub-contracting despite being forbidden in many of the university-agent agreements examined as a part of Huang et al.’s study “Governance of agents within the recruitment of international scholars: A typology of contractual management procedures in higher education“.
Sub-contracting has allowed many massive agencies to stay growing, cementing their position within the market and their power relationship with universities.
But it’s also provided with a crucial route for smaller agencies and their students, especially those in areas less frequented by the International Office, to access universities, information and support about the admissions process.
And it’s allowed universities to stay growing international student intake through agents without extending resources going into agent management, support and monitoring.
Two things that have changed more recently, which have raised the profile of aggregators, are technology and, therefore, the influx of personal equity (PE) and risk capital (VC).
Technology allows the more efficient aggregation of universities and their courses, making these available easily to agencies en bloc, alongside efficient centralized internal control and processing. In some ways, it’s universities and their courses being aggregated the maximum amount as education agencies.
At an equivalent time, PE and VC funds, which have recognized the worth of international student mobility as a multi-billion-dollar industry for a few time through their investments in pathway programmes, have taken the chance to expand their reach across the availability chain and invest directly in high margin student recruitment.
So should universities be scared of agent aggregators? This may depend upon how reliant they become on aggregators – or maybe one aggregator – within how some became reliant on agents generally. The aggregators squeeze the schools for higher commissions and their aggregated agencies for an outsized slice of the commission pie.
Lack of transparency
Host nations and institutions celebrate the numerous contributions made by international students, including, yet faraway from limited to, the financial investments they create in tuition, accommodation and other spending within the local economy. Agents represent an indispensable role in supporting this multi-billion-dollar or pound project, yet many features of their work remain unclear.
And, not coincidentally, a scarcity of transparency is itself a frequent criticism of this recruitment method. International students and their families are typically unaware of the various commissions an agent stands to earn depending upon where a student enrols – a misalignment of interests, if not an outright conflict, that’s a feature of and not just a bug in prevailing practice.
Universities also lack a transparent view of the inner workings of their agent partners, particularly concerning sub-agents. Despite the vital role sub-agents represent in generating applications – and, in effect, representing universities overseas – international facilities have nearly no direct engagement with them. In terms of potential misinformation, reputation, and student welfare, the risks implicit in these methods are noteworthy.
Stepping fully into the sunshine
In its 2014 publication The Agent Question, the Observatory on Borderless education concluded that evolving regulation could help minimize the potential for bad practice, which the “industry must step fully into the light“. We wholeheartedly agree.
To further understanding, we hope that researchers, practitioners, policy-makers, regulatory bodies etc, collaborate to devote greater attention to the work of international education agencies.
To that end, we are glad to announce a replacement publication in development, Student Recruitment Agents in International Higher Education: A multi-stakeholder perspective on challenges and best practices.
Subjects to be treated include cultivating agent engagement tactics, contractual and relational governance of agent links, intensifying transparency, financial benefit, information asymmetries, due persistence and monitoring, government guidance, agent accreditation and certification and rising trends.
In addition to institutional perspectives, we aim to incorporate those agents themselves – and students and their families.
We hope this publication will prompt critical conversations and generate new knowledge to profit agents, the schools which engage them, regulatory bodies and – most significantly – the countless scholars. The sincerity of this effort impacts their futures.
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