Controversy surrounds international student recruitment

For some time now, the discussion about whether American colleges coulduse commission-based agents when recruiting students abroad has been the hottest of hot-button issues in international admissions, with each camp staking out fiercely partisan positions.

[This is an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education, America’s leading higher education publication. It is presented here under an agreement with University World News.]

It all came to a head with the recommendation of a commission organised by the National Association for College Admission Counseling – which represents some 13,000 college admissions officers and high-school counsellors – that attempted to chart a middle ground.

Basically, the admissions group, known as NACAC, said: ‘Colleges, we’d rather you not pay recruitment agents. But if you’re gonna do it, we’ll hold our noses as you go ahead.’

It’s been nearly a year since NACAC’s members endorsed the policy shift and there’s some evidence that the issue, if not exactly dead, is certainly less divisive.

Colleges that had been sitting on the sidelines have moved forward. Some have chosen to use overseas agents (agents areverboten in domestic recruitment); the American International Recruitment Council, an organisation that sets standards for and accredits agents, says its institutional membership grew 22%, to 236 colleges, last year.

Others have gone in the other direction, even posting on their admissions websites that their institutions do not work with international recruiters.

“It seems to me,” says Jim L Miller, a former NACAC president who helped develop the new policy, “that the frenzy has calmed.”

Debate has cooled, but worries remain

It would be wrong, however, to mistake the cooling of the agent debate for the end of concerns about fraud and abuse in international admissions.

Instead, if conversations I had last week at the annual meeting of the Overseas Association for College Admission Counseling, NACAC’s internationally focused affiliate, are any indication, those anxieties may be widening and deepening.

I heard about outrageous agent contracts, yes – like one in which all placement guarantees were off if a student tried to access an email address set up in his name and listed on his college applications, a requirement that ensured the agent had total control over communication between the student and all colleges to which he applied.

But I also heard about forged recommendation letters, fraudulent transcripts, phantom test-takers, even faked Skype interviews in which more-fluent English speakers took the place of prospective students, fooling colleges into thinking applicants had the language proficiency necessary for admission.

Those deceitful practices aren’t new to international admissions – in fact, a colleague and I wrote about the subject nearly three years ago for The Chronicle and The New York Times.

It may be, though, that the contention over paying agents in some way obscured discussion of the broader problem. Several years on, there’s arguably greater transparency around the use of agents, at least those contracted and paid for by American colleges. The issue of fraud in international admissions remains.

As overseas enrolments continue to climb, college officials say they grapple with the challenge of ensuring legitimacy in the admissions process. “We pursue every indication of fraud to its conclusion,” said Michael A Steidel, director of admission at Carnegie Mellon University, during a session at the OACAC conference devoted to the topic. “It takes a lot of time, a lot of effort.
source: http://www.punchng.com/education/controversy-surrounds-international-student-recruitment/

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