I’ve been trying to use this column to talk honestly about some of the realities of my job and the tension between recruitment pressures and protecting the student experience.
Perhaps I was naïve, but it’s been really hard to balance being critical, while at the same time advocating for the work we do – and I’m feeling the heat!
I previously wrote about my unease at trying to keep up with competitors by accepting qualifications simply because they do. This feels increasingly risky unless we can build more support pathways for students.
This competitive race also extends to another topic we never discuss openly. That is how much we actually spend on the recruitment of international students.
It’s not uncommon for a university to be paying 20-25% commission of the first year tuition fee to agents – in addition to paying for marketing activity, fairs, bonuses, global travel and maybe a scholarship.
When you add all the costs up, the value of the international fee can barely be more than a UK home fee – which we now know, is not sustainable.
The agent commission bill, fees and discounts are not visible in the HESA data so it is hard to tell what incentives are driving numbers.
Unhelpfully for me, this is what academics look at to find out who is recruiting the most students and then I have to justify our performance in comparison without knowing the full picture.
Behind the headline numbers, the cost of acquisition for some institutions might be much higher, to the point where isn’t even worth it.
It might also explain why massive growth hasn’t necessarily led to more investment in students, as the money was spent on recruiting them in the first place (see my first article).
What I want to make crystal clear however, is that I am not criticising agents as a cost. They are essential to the student support process, and we’d be lost without them.
Agents are not suppliers. We’re not buying students from them. I see them as an extension of our students during the ‘customer’ phase of recruitment when students are comparing options as potential buyers.
Of course, they are motivated by money, but not for short term gain. Good agents rely on word of mouth and satisfaction of student customers.
They’re the ones that care about the student most, because they’re in touch with the family unit directly. The business model is to be recommended to brothers, sisters, cousins and friends as a trusted service year after year.
Things get complicated when we set higher targets than they achieve alone, and then incentivise them with higher commission bands for meeting those quotas.
It encourages agents not to necessarily convince more applicants to join my university, but instead to pool applicants together with other agents, to meet our targets.
It is a strange situation to try and motivate an individual agent, both knowing they can earn more money working through another agent to meet higher commission levels, rather than working with me directly.
It’s also a strange situation to try and convince my director to increase commission rates when we both know those rates are inflated by this situation, so where do you draw the line?
This aggregator model is not ideal for universities. You want to really be working with the agent that speaks to the student, and as soon as there’s an extra step, that is an issue for student support.
In an ideal world, commission levels should be the same flat fee, irrespective of where a student enrols.
For example, every university could agree to pay £2,000 for agent-led student support. That’s the law. Then we’d have to compete on academic qualities not financial incentives.
In an ideal world, commission levels should be the same flat fee, irrespective of where a student goes.
Like any other industry, where there is money to be made, it attracts criminals. These people are not ‘rogue’ agents – they are fraudsters acting as agents to decieve the student, university and more than likely, another honest agent in the process.
We need to be careful not to blame the wrong people.
In fact, better than that, we need to stop looking for someone to blame and take a look at our own processes.
Even the most ardent international officer I know, would admit to plenty of financial wastage in the recruitment pipeline, with a minimal amount of resource dedicated to managing millions of pounds worth of agent payments and student revenue.
Nobody cared when the numbers were booming, but we now need to look at the margins again and how to be financially viable and sustainable as a sector.
I accept that includes me too. I’ve become increasingly aware that venting my frustrations might not be helpful for colleagues, so I am going to stop.
This has been almost therapuetic for me and I could say a lot more, but instead I feel motivated to once again to use my experience to influence the standards I believe in, from the inside.
I sense it is time to lay low for a while and let others take over the mantle, so will you be the next Secret IO?
Do you want to be the next Secret IO? Comment below or contribute anonymously by emailing editorial@thepienews.com
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The PIE News.
