US: Not-so-secret agents

American colleges seem increasingly willing to at least try out the use of agents in recruiting international students, and a series of events at the recent NAFSA: Association of International Educators conference only reinforced that reality, writes Elizabeth Redden for Inside Higher Ed. However, a serious debate still simmers about whether the use of agents best serves the interests of students, and a schism exists between those in international education who promote the practice and those in admissions who continue to reject the notion of incentive- or commission-based overseas recruiting on ethical grounds.

The reliance on in-country agents to recruit international students is commonplace in Australia and the United Kingdom, and companies are certainly seeing the potential of an emerging US market for agents - with two of the bigger companies in international education, IDP Education and Hobsons, using the NAFSA conference as a launching pad for their own forays into it. Other recruiters who trekked to the conference in Los Angeles were taking more of a "wait and watch" approach, as one put it.
Full report on the Inside Higher Ed site