Speaking on a panel about agents and international student recruitment at the European International Education Association (EAIE) conference in Gothenburg last week, industry stalwarts discussed recruitment pitfalls that some institutions have fallen into – and how others could avoid them.
Co-founder and CEO designate of the Global Education Recruitment Standards Authority (GERSA), Nick Golding noted that anti-immigration headwinds in major study destinations such as the US, Canada, Australia and the UK are pushing international students to look elsewhere. But he warned that there would be consequences from any “influxes of international students into communities that are not used to receiving them”.
“If there’s any lessons to be learned from Canada, the UK and Australia, it is that the social license of international students, and indeed the institutions recruiting them, can quickly become forfeited or impaired,” he told delegates.
“So the European providers here [at the conference] are going to see those rapid influxes and if they’re not measured there can be a quite rapid backlash both locally and at policy level. So if you do nothing else, I would urge you to learn the lessons of our mistakes.”
It follows major policy shake ups in Canada and Australia – both of which have seen de facto caps on international student numbers – as well as closer scrutiny of the sector in the UK and an immigration crackdown in the US.
If you do nothing else, I would urge you to learn the lessons of our mistakes
Nick Golding, GERSA
Many of these “push factors” would encourage students to look at other study destinations, Golding suggested, especially as many offer better value for money.
Panellists also discussed the importance of using reputable agents or aggregators when recruiting international students, which they suggested was particularly important in a time where closer attention is being paid to recruitment practices in the sector.
International Education Association of Australia (IEAA) CEO, Phil Honeywood, pointed out that the vast majority of international students coming to Australia are recruited through education agents.
The “wild frontier” of student recruitment in the country came to the fore during the pandemic, he said, when agents were fighting for any students they could get.
But Honeywood stressed that it was not just up to agents to ensure that the sector upholds good recruitment practices.
“It’s really important to note that you can’t have a bad agent, so to speak, without a badly behaved education provider,” he told delegates.
Ascent One CEO Naresh Gulati, himself a former international student, agreed that agents were an “easy scapegoat” and that the actual picture was much more complex.
“There are some agents who have worked very, very hard. They have contributed so much to this industry, and the industry relies on them,” he said.
“[If] a shonky provider appoints a shonky agent, the student is going to suffer. But if a good provider has a dodgy agent who recruits a dodgy student, we have an immigration problem,” he added.
But he pointed out that the rise in technology in international student recruitment – and particularly the use of AI – could prove to be useful, as he said it could help to weed out bogus students.
“Technology needs to be used to identify how genuine the student is and the motivators around it. That’s what is missing and AI can come in very handy to that,” he said.
