Voices

The US is largely the default education choice for Chinese families but I am seeing some evidence that that is wavering.

I’m very proud of being Irish and of what Ireland has to offer international clients. We’re a very small country but we have a fantastic reputation for being warm and friendly and welcoming.

If one of us travels we’re representing all of us. We have such different programmes and specialties that we’re able to not really be in competition for the same students.

It is frustrating, because we do have a world class FE system and international students want to take advantage of that. It would be very welcome if our border agency was more embracing of that.

If NACAC ruled in favour of agents you’d see many more US schools at workshops such as ICEF. There would be much more focus on that new opportunity to recruit, and it would increase the profile of all US schools.

A language school is a community, I’ve always believed that I’m running a community and education extends way beyond the classroom. A good language school provides for the learning of life.

Many presidents are committed to internationalisation and understand that their institutions will not be vital in this part of the 21st century if they don’t think about how they position themselves internationally.

Education is held on a high pedestal in the US, but I don’t think using agents diminishes that...We uphold every admissions standard whether or not a student comes through an agent

Basically the adult market is going down very much but the junior market is staying the same and the high school market is growing a lot. People are not paying for a course themselves but paying for their children.

Students come to university with a variety of English language qualifications, some as much as two years old. Putting them all through the same independent, CEFR aligned test on arrival is now an important part of induction into many institutions.

Europe is comprised of many countries but you can cross the borders on land... Still it took them years to set up Erasmus. In Asia our borders are in water. It's more difficult for students to cross over to other countries

We have tackled abuse of the student route head on — without affecting genuine students. By protecting the reputation of the British education system we will be able to compete in a global race.

We have over the years advised and sent students to dozens of institutions with whom we have no commercial interests and banked the student’s goodwill. Our goodwill bank is very deep, hence a positive word of mouth.

Growing from US$5 million to US$10 million has been a huge endeavour made even more complex by having multi divisions and multi-cultural offices in more than four countries.

All US colleges can recruit internationals, although fee requirements and support services differ state by state. There’s definitely a wide market for international students to shop around, and the cost is usually less than universities