campusreview.com.au
enrolments. This competition has been
so intense over the years that it has
distracted US institutions from creating a
substantial international education sector.
Many American universities have limited
overseas programs, provide scholarship
programs for overseas students, or facilitate
bilateral semester-based exchanges
and receive fee-paying international
postgraduates. However, their focus has
been overwhelmingly on their domestic
student profile. The game changer for
these institutions was the GFC, which
caused severe reductions in their funding
allocations from state government sources.
As fewer students had the luxury of passing
up their home state-funded place, the great
American internal student migration pattern
was also compromised. US universities
that had previously looked askance at
the few institutions in their country that
had embraced relatively high ratios of
fee-paying international enrolments soon
realised they had limited alternative revenue
options. It has largely been out of necessity
that the number of full tuition fee-paying
international students has doubled from
500,000 to 1 million in less than a decade.
US EMBRACES EDUCATION AGENTS
A great deal of credit for the massive
growth that has occurred in international
students coming to Australia is due to
offshore-based education agents’ early
engagement with them. Our nascent
international education sector was quick
to realise that paying commission to these
trusted and informed intermediaries made
them more likely to encourage their student
clients to choose Australia as their study
destination. The then-wholly Australian
universities’ owned IDP Education was one
of the earliest large agencies to set up in
most of our key student source countries.
Curiously, American universities
resisted attempts to engage with offshore
education agents. With the strong policy
(and visa control) support of their federal
government, they consistently maintained
that only direct enrolment applications
from individual overseas students would
be given consideration. Of course, shadow
education agents were often still engaged
by students’ families to write the direct
applications for them. Even though the
agents could charge a large upfront fee
for completing the paperwork, they far
preferred the larger tuition fee-based
commission income they received from
INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION
Australian education providers.
Again, after the GFC, US-based
institutions pragmatically began to
change their view of education agents.
An independent non-government
organisation, the American International
Recruitment Council (AIRC), published a
list of 23 standards by which American
universities could benchmark quality agents
for overseas student recruitment purposes.
AIRC also used these standards to create
an accreditation system that has now
endorsed more than 100 offshore agencies
as appropriate partners to pay commission
for recruiting students. The fact that each
of these agencies has been prepared to
pay upwards of US$15,000 ($21,000) to be
audited and accredited by AIRC indicates
how keen they are to gain endorsement
and entree into the potentially huge
American education market. By contrast,
offshore-based education agents have
never been required to pay any fee to be
authorised to send students to Australia.
INDIA READY TO POUNCE
Until recently, students from the
subcontinent have often found it all too
difficult to gain a student visa to study at
American universities. However, thanks to
a combination of other study destination
countries creating barriers to entry and the
US looking more favourably on India, the
prospect of studying, and even staying, in
America has become far more enticing.
The US education institutions that actively
pursued full tuition fee-paying international
students have skewed their enrolment
profile toward the Chinese in recent years.
Whereas, China comprises 35 per cent of
Australian universities’ overseas student
cohort (with India at 15 per cent), it is not
unusual for Chinese students to make up
more than 60 per cent of many American
universities’ comparable student intake.
These same universities are now looking to
India as a potential new source country that
might be able to provide greater cultural
diversity on campus.
A disproportionately high number of
current Silicon Valley IT entrepreneurs,
senior managers and entry-level employees
have originated from India. At the same
time, America has identified a shortage
of US domestic students graduating with
sufficient engineering, IT and other STEM
qualifications to meet local employer
demand. This skill shortage was recently
highlighted by President Obama when
he requested that congress authorise
new six-year, post-study work visas for