While attention has been paid to agents embellishing the student experience for commission, genuine cultural misconceptions are also causing students to be misled by agents, delegates at NISAU’s India UK Education Conference heard.
“I met an international student union president last year who had been told by their agent that there was a guaranteed placement year attached to their MBA,” Wonkhe associate editor Jim Dickinson told delegates.
“When they arrived, one month into their course, they realised it didn’t exist,” he added.
For Dickinson, the episode constituted a “bare-faced lie” from an agent seeking commission, but other speakers said it pointed to a broader issue of cross-cultural misunderstanding.
“The use of the word placement in India means finding a job. In the UK the word really means finding an internship, so there is a mismatch in expectation,” explained one UK university pro-vice chancellor.
Furthermore, in the Indian private sector – where 70% of students are educated – placements are found by the institutions rather than by students themselves.
“So, if you’re an Indian agent and you’re told there’s a placement, you’re making that assumption based on your experiences at home,” said British Council international student mobility global lead, Jacqui Jenkins.
“I don’t know whether people are deliberately misleading, or that things get lost in translation and there are assumptions being made.
“It’s through training that you demystify these things, and you can assess if those counsellors truly understand the UK system and if those students are well prepared,” she said.
The UK’s Agent Quality Framework (AQF) now contains career services training covering internships, placements and the Graduate Route, though these were not originally part of the framework.
Now, 97% of AQF-accredited agents – of which there are over 9,000 – say that this was the most useful module of the training, according to Jenkins.
With the AQF at its core, conference speakers praised the UK’s “proactive” and “collaborative” co-regulatory model, contrasting it to destinations including Australia and British Columbia, Canada, where regulation has been “imposed”, said IDP chief partner officer Simon Emmett.
In the UK, it is “widely expected” that UKVI will make it mandatory for all student sponsors to sign up to the AQF, UUKi director Jamie Arrowsmith told delegates. Currently, Universities UK’s 141 members are all signatories of the framework.
I don’t know whether people are deliberately misleading, or that things get lost in translation and there are assumptions being made
Jacqui Jenkins, British Council
Recently, a string of UK institutions have been placed on UKVI ‘action plans’ due to concerns about visa fraud.
The University of Glasgow and Study Group were the most recent sponsors to be placed under action plans for committing a breach – “short of a serious breach” – giving them “an opportunity to improve [their] processes”, according to Home Office guidelines.
The plans, which typically last three to six months, are intended to “ensure that it does not become necessary for UKVI to revoke [the institution’s] licence” and serve as an example of the government’s serious stance on migration standards.
“If anyone doesn’t think that UKVI’s audits have teeth, speak to any one of those universities who have been through one of those audits in the last 12 months… they are really tough processes,” said Arrowsmith.
In a previous development for agent compliance, UKVI confirmed last year that agents in the UK will be formally named on CAS documents by summer 2025, a significant step forward in enhancing transparency and enabling universities to make data-informed decisions about who they’re working with.
Meanwhile, there are still certain “questionable” Indian regions where institutions do not recruit at all due to compliance risks, with speakers predicting that technological improvements will soon allow universities to identify genuine students in these areas.
Elsewhere, speakers emphasised the importance of not vilifying agents but treating them as equal partners, while putting in the levers that ensure they meet the obligations of the sector.
