Agents to recruit international students may be like global rankings of universities, suggested William Lawton in a presentation here Wednesday. "Even if you don't like the look of them, they are here to stay," said Lawton, of the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education, a think tank.
Lawton presented data on a survey on the use of agents in seven nations, and said he wanted to focus on the United States, which has been "an outlier" on agents until recently, with many leading colleges and universities resistant to their use. Lawton's group is based in Britain and he spoke about agents at Going Global, the international education meeting of the British Council, which like its counterparts in Australia, Canada and elsewhere operates in an environment in which the use of agents is "routine."
In September, the National Association for College Admission Counseling lifted its longstanding ban on American colleges using agents who are paid at least in part on commission. The data presented here -- collected before the NACAC vote -- reinforce a view that agents had already become a significant player in recruiting foreign students to the United States, and that their influence is likely to grow (and may exceed what colleges think it to be).
In a 2012 survey by the Observatory of 181 colleges and universities in seven countries, the American colleges and universities reported that only 11 percent of international students had been recruited through agents. That is the smallest share of the countries surveyed, which include nations that are competing with the United States for a larger share of the international student market.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/05/01/new-data-use-agents-recruit-international-students#sthash.njIq75Xx.dpbs