Data obtained by Times Higher Education from 158 higher education institutions under Britain's Freedom of Information Act reveal that all but 19 elite or specialist institutions now use agents to enroll non-European Union students.
Spending by 106 institutions that provided details of commission payments totaled £86.7 million ($133.7 million) in 2013-14. This is a 16.5 percent increase from the figure two years earlier.
It appears that the increase is driven as much by rising commission rates as by expanding recruitment.
Across the 124 institutions that provided information on admissions, the number of international students enrolled using agents totaled 58,257 in 2013-14. This was up 6.4 percent on the 2011-12 figure of 54,752.
The data suggest that agents were used to recruit a significant proportion of all non-E.U. learners studying at British universities.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/02/20/british-universities-are-spending-more-agents-recruit-international-students