Canada’s University of Windsor is facing a legal battle with student recruitment firm Higher-Edge, a specialist recruiter which is suing the university for $24.1 million regarding a number of claims surrounding approaches to Higher Edge’s employees and to international students directly, against contractual terms.
The case throws up complexities around using third party professional student recruiters and has hit the headlines in Canada. It also led to the forced closure of Higher Edge’s India offices, claims Mel Broitman, the company’s MD.
Broitman said that he was surprised when a public university chose to end an exclusive student recruitment contract that had yielded 6,300 enrolments from “dozens of countries” and meant an ensuing CAN$300 million in enrolment income.
The university announced a decision to work with multiple and diverse education agencies instead of Higher-Edge, which runs the Canadian University Application Centre in various countries notably in Asia and South America.
Broitman explained the move raised question marks for him “because the international student recruitment industry is rife with documentation of fraud and its variants, often perpetrated by recruitment agencies themselves,” nodding to recent legislation enacted by the Canadian government to circumvent this.
“What we later learned was that the university’s upper administration and supervising faculty had already hatched a plan to poach our employees,” said Broitman, who explained that this occurred in India.
“They worked with [our staff] covertly in the last months while Windsor was still in contract with us. Incredulously, when our contract ended with Windsor, university faculty travelled to India without our knowledge, and worked with our staff, using our own offices, branding and promotions, to attract students for their own gains.”
The case has made the headlines in the national news in Canada
In its Statement of Claim, the company alleges that the defendants’ actions “have caused and are continuing to cause Higher-Edge significant damages, including the virtual destruction of its business and reputation in the India student recruitment market”.
In a statement responding to the legal action and seen by The PIE News, the University of Windsor has acknowledged the lawsuit “which makes a variety of claims regarding the recruitment of international students”.
“The University is preparing its statement of defense, which will vigorously deny Higher Edge’s claims,” it reads.
