international education
campusreview.com.au
Bangers and smash the system
Disrupting the international
student sausage factory.
By Monique Skidmore
Australians love sausages, but we
prefer not to know what goes into
them. Australians love the jobs
and revenue generated by international
students, but most have no idea about the
process of having them enter the country,
and what happens when they are here. The
deals we do with agents on and offshore,
the deals prospective students and their
parents make with agents, the property
deals, the palming off of responsibility from
the Department of Home Affairs to tertiary
institutions and then onto agents – it’s not
a pleasant business – but the end product
is still consumed.
Australia relies on agents to a
much greater extent than other major
international education providers. The
amount of money Australian institutions
pay each year is staggering. Agent
commission fees in Australia range from
10 per cent of the first year full-time
international student fee at some Group
of Eight institutions, to 45–50 per cent of
the first year full-time international student
fee for a VET qualification in regional
VET colleges. Most universities pay, on
average, 15–25 per cent commission rates.
In developing countries where English
is not the primary language or language
of schooling, student recruitment
agencies have become attractive sites
for ancillary business models that use
the overseas destination to add business
lines. Student accommodation providers
hook up with major agents and in-country
representatives of Australian institutions
to bundle up services. This provides an
additional commission for recruitment
agents. These services also extend to
the booming inner-city property markets
of Australia’s major cities, where real
estate companies hire space in student
recruitment agencies.
The Australian permanent residency
application process and requirements
are met with the combination of time
in country as well as money spent on
country, and property is the simplest way
to achieve the points required to secure
permanent residency.
Multiple reports have concluded that
the reliance on agents means we are not
receiving the best qualified students –
undoubtedly we sometimes are – but such
well-credentialed students are sometimes
‘switched’ by agents to different countries
with higher academic entry requirements.
The ability of students and their parents
to pay Australian fees and these ‘additional’
services could quite well determine when
a student is strongly encouraged by
an agent to choose an Australian capital
city university.
But it could all be very different. There
is now no need for Australian education
institutions to continue to use agents. If
there is one thing the current pandemic
has shown Australian educators, it is that
they cannot continue to lag behind the rest
of the economy in the implementation of
cost-effective technological solutions that
enhance customer experience.
Direct admission, via video calling, is
a simple solution and it allows for global
diversification of student admissions, lower
fees, and the ability therefore for Australia
to price itself into markets other than
north and south Asia.
Video technology, admissions chatbots,
and an ability for admissions staff to add
a lecturer into a student information call
in real time – this is just the tip of the
possible iceberg. Compliance risks can
be largely eliminated when optical and
facial recognition technology is adopted
for online exams and English testing,
and to verify the authenticity of financial
documents and education qualifications.
These simple and commercially available
technologies do not deal with the issue of
creating brand awareness for an education
institution in another country, but that is
also an issue amenable to analytics and
automation technologies.
Removing most agents and their
many sub-agents from the Australian
education scene and replacing them with
direct contact with potential students
and available technologies also removes
the risk, extra costs and unseemly
practices currently overseen by Australian
education institutions. It untangles the
permanent residency, property market
inflation and financial due diligence issues
that have come about over time by an
abrogation or outsourcing of responsibility
by government departments and
education providers.
The ability to seriously cut costs, lower
fees and price ourselves into diverse
markets and end these 20th century
analogue practices is here now, and
the pandemic provides real urgency to
these changes.
Surely the time has come when we
should decide what goes into our sausages
and quality-assure that process ourselves.
Agent recruitment and endlessly circulating
recruitment staff visiting agents no longer
create revenue and opportunities. Direct
recruitment will significantly enhance
Australian education’s reputation for quality
and help us recruit the very brightest
aspiring young scholars to Australia from a
diverse range of countries. ■
Monique Skidmore has been a deputy
vice-chancellor (international) at several
Australian universities.
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