When Carolyn Campbell travels to foreign countries to keep tabs on British universities’ recruiting efforts overseas, one of the first things she does is to look at the classified ads in the back pages of local newspapers. As head of international affairs for the U.K.’s Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, she’s on the alert for misleading assertions by lackluster British institutions. Too often, she says, a Poppleton University (the fictional campus created by Times Higher Education’s satirical columnist Laurie Taylor) will make ludicrous claims about being a close peer of Oxford and Cambridge.
Campbell’s sharp-eyed reading habits underscore how the expanding global marketplace for foreign student s (and the hefty tuition revenues they often bring) has been accompanied by rising concerns about consumer protection. Third-party recruiters and agents, typically retained by Western universities to recruit foreign students, have become a particular source of controversy – so much so that Philip Altbach, director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, recently called them a “specter… haunting international higher education.”
Altbach argues that agents are not simply innocuous information providers, but hardnosed sales people with no particular qualifications, who will do whatever they can to lure ill-informed students to cash-starved campuses. He maintains that agents are even deputized by the universities for whom they work to offer foreign students admission. He notes that, in the worst cases, agents have an egregious conflict of interest. They sometimes receive payment from both sides of the student-university transaction, claiming to give dispassionate advice to foreign students and their families while actually steering them to one of the agent’s client institutions. “The solution to this growing phenomenon is simple,” Altbach writes: agents should be abolished. “Agents and recruiters have no legitimate role in international higher education. They are unnecessary and often less than honest practitioners who stand in the way of a good flow of information to prospective students and required data about these students to academic institutions in the host countries.”
Altbach’s cri de coeur did not fall on sympathetic ears at the American International Recruitment Council (AIRC), an organization founded in 2008 by a group of 125 U.S. colleges and universities and 32 student recruitment agencies. AIRC aims to establish professional guidelines for recruiting agents that will help American universities – traditionally reluctant to use agents because of ethical qualms – embrace them as a tool for regaining market share in the fierce global student recruiting race. Agents are routinely used by universities in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The AIRC says agents can be the best option for many colleges and universities with small or nonexistent recruiting staffs, and with limited understanding of the foreign-student market. Moreover, recruitment agencies provide valuable information and guidance to prospective students, the AIRC argues, maintaining that there is no evidence to support Altbach’s contention that agents are authorized by their higher ed clients to make admissions decisions.
The debate got downright ugly in the pages of Times Higher Education, with Mitch Leventhal, vice president and treasurer of the AIRC, calling Altbach’s position “arrogant, naïve, or both.” While expressing admiration for Altbach’s contributions to the field of global higher ed, Leventhal, who is vice chancellor for global affairs at the State University of New York, added: “…on this issue, he is out of his depth.” The AIRC’s bottom line: agents are here to stay, and establishing common professional standards is the best way to keep them ethical and effective.
I confess I was a little surprised both by Altbach’s absolutist views on this issue, and by the vehemence of Leventhal’s response. (Two small disclosures: Altbach blurbed my book, although he certainly doesn’t agree with everything in it, and I have consulted for SUNY, although not on this issue.) The existence of recruiters seems to me not especially surprising in a world in which mobile students need guidance as they seek educational opportunities, and universities need assistance finding and recruiting those students. I don’t doubt that students are sometimes misled, and that certain institutions are more interested in finding warm bodies than in making a painstaking intellectual match between campus and student. But as far as I can tell, the matchmaker function played by recruiters is quite legitimate – a useful, albeit imperfect, component of a thriving marketplace. I’ll keep watching the debate, but for now the “mend it, don’t end it” camp has my vote.
4 Responses to A Sharp Debate About Agents and Recruiters
11122222 - January 31, 2011 at 10:35 am
I’m very much for “mending it” too, and that for me means putting the responsibility for selecting a place to study on the students and the admissions process on the universities squarely in the hands of those involved–the students and the universities. “Middlemen” such as agents are not needed. What we need are better and more transparent sources of information for students. This information can be provided by the universities themselves and by agencies such as EducationUSA. Students and their families interested in studying abroad need to take responsibility for researching appropriate schools and applying to those they select. There may be a place for other information providers as well.
I might point out that I represent no one in this debate–I am simply trying to raise some questions that I think need to be discussed in the United States and abroad about an issue that has received little attention
Philip Altbach, Center for International Higher Education, Boston College.
caherrin - January 31, 2011 at 1:59 pm
“Mending” international student recruitment practices, as Ben Wildavsky and Philip Altbach term the evolving actions in U.S. higher education, depends on your point of reference and departure. In a perfect world, interested international students and their parents would access comprehensive information and counseling advice to inform their decisions about international study. That world does not exist (indeed, as the parent of a U.S. student in the college application process, it doesn’t exist here!). The culturally rich context in which we understand and navigate our own educational system is just one reason why active efforts to interpret and explain American higher education is an essential function that can reasonably be delivered by so-called “middlemen”. I’ve witnessed this process myself when giving presentations abroad to prospective students and their parents.
For a handful of U.S. institutions, international brand recognition (and often institutional resources) means that their educational offerings are in effective readily available and globally recognized. These institutions—most of us can name them—are the Googles and Microsofts of U.S. higher education. Nearly 1 in 5 (19%) of all international students studying in the United States attend one of 25 recognizable, elite U.S. institutions (the vast majority for graduate studies). For many reasons, most of the other 4300+ U.S. institutions are effectively also-rans, unknown and hidden to prospective international students. For an increasing number of these aspiring colleges and universities in international student recruitment, “mending” this picture is a key reason why using qualified, legitimate, ethical international recruitment and student counseling services has become an operational imperative.
I should note that I am not a disinterested observer—I consult on institutional practices involving international education, and among my clients are both the American International Recruitment Council and a large international recruiting agency. I have worked with U.S. institutions seeking to gain a foothold in attracting international students as well.
While baseline services and information are available through the principal U.S. government facilitator of U.S. higher education outreach, the 450-or-so educational advising centers funded in part by the U.S. Department of State and known by the moniker, EducationUSA, these outlets are chronically underfunded and understaffed (I have lobbied for many years for increasing their funding). And as good as the staffs of these operations are—and I can vouch for their commitment, integrity, and training—they can’t begin to provide the comprehensive outreach and counseling services that are needed to attract prospective students to the full array of interested and eager U.S. institutions seeking students from abroad. For example, in China, there is only one recognized EducationUSA outlet (in Beijing); in India, there are but 7 (of which 2 are listed as satellite offices). These are the two largest markets for U.S. higher education!
The vast majority of U.S. higher education institutions wanting to actively attract qualified international students must do so on their own. The economics of undertaking this effort puts a premium on cost-effectiveness, and outsourcing recruiting services is one of the more attractive options. That a U.S. standards body has been formed to set and measure performance by bona fide recruiting agencies and to engage U.S. institutions about their own best practices in this regard should be heralded as a classic and appropriate American response to a critical challenge. Banning the practice is not the solution; engaging in it responsibly is an appropriate and reasonable thing for U.S. institutions.
Carl A. Herrin, Global Education Solutions LLC
studentroads - February 1, 2011 at 4:19 am
Based on the anecdotal evidence of interviews that I have had conducted with international students, many do not feel like they were well informed about the particular US university before they arrived. There is a break down somewhere in the existing system that needs to be addressed through more transparent, readily accessible information.
A formal study of international students’ experiences would be a great step in assessing the depth and breadth of the problems, and can be used to measure the effectiveness of AIRC’s professional standards.
jyotishukla - February 2, 2011 at 7:21 am
I would like to draw the attention of those who oppose the system of Recruitment Agents to following points
1. The recruitment agents function all over the world, including developed nations like Australia, Britain, Canada, Germany and indeed, all over Europe. The students from these nations are equally or better exposed to Internet. As such, they should be able to locate academic programs of their choice without any help. Arguably, the recruiters in the developed world should be job-less.
Applying for an American institution is a complex procedure and best and most-equipped students also need help. Hence, the agents in these countries also have a thriving business.
2. An institution can promote only their own programs. Hopefully, ONE will suit the student’s requirements. The student is entitled to be informed of multiple choices, which only a recruiter can display on his shelf.
3. The parents supporting the students’ higher education are ill-equipped and inadequately informed with limited or no knowledge of English. The recruiting agents perform an important role of advising them on resource-planning, which enables the student to pursue higher education abroad.
4. For every student quoted ill- or inadequately-informed by a recruiter, there will be a patient, a client or indeed, a student who would have wanted his physician, attorney or teacher to be better. Improving the knowledge is the right solution, whether doctor, lawyer, teacher or recruitment agent.
5. Carl has mentioned about the resource-crunch affected Edu-USA having but 7 centers in India. I have first-hand experience of one of those ‘Satellite’ centers nourished by well-meaning business community of Gujarat.
On the other hand, 13 out of the first 32 firms certified by AIRC are based in India; 4 of these 13 are headquartered in my city. The role played by these recruiters is very evident. Therefore, when someone takes that ‘great’ step of conducting the research, s/he would do well to separate the findings for AIRC certified agencies from the rest.
Finally, though propagators of open market and competition, USA is welcome to ban its own universities from engaging recruitment agents. As rightly pointed out by Dr. Leventhal, USA cannot extend its jurisdiction beyond the 50 stars.
The USofA is certainly a land of opportunities, more so for the eminent research scholars and the Faculty. The aggressive marketing by other nations using agents will benefit by more students opting for their programs; soon, the Faculty and scholars will also follow the suit. Indeed, US is no more the ONLY land of opportunities.
Being the CEO of a recruitment firm, I am directly interested in the subject. I welcome the researchers to measure the efficacy of AIRC’s professional standards adopted by us.