The governing board of the National Association for College Admission Counseling has backed away from a proposal to immediately bar its member colleges from using commissioned recruiters overseas, instead voting to appoint a panel to recommend ethical standards for best practices in international recruitment.
The original proposal would have modified the admissions group’s Statement of Principles of Good Practice to make clear that language prohibiting per-student compensation applies to both domestic and international recruitment. It would not have blocked colleges from using other types of private-sector recruitment abroad.
But the board’s decision, posted on the organization’s Web site, defers for up to two years a vote by its members on changes in overseas-recruitment policy. Officials with NACAC, as the group is known, had previously said that members would vote on policy revisions, as recommended by the board, at its annual meeting, in September.
“We didn’t want to make a short-term decision that would have had long-term consequences,” said Jim L. Miller, NACAC’s president. “We didn’t want to cut off conversation.”
At their meeting this past weekend, board members considered proceeding with an outright ban or adopting language that would express the organization’s opposition to the use of incentive compensation but would not prohibit colleges from using commissioned recruiters. Instead, they decided to adopt what Mr. Miller said one member characterized as a “Goldilocks approach.”
“One approach was too hot, one is too cold, and hopefully this one is just right,” he said.
‘Doing the Right Thing’
Indeed, one of the most prominent proponents of using commissioned agents, Mitch Leventhal, vice chancellor for global affairs at the State University of New York, praised the board’s action. “NACAC’s doing the right thing,” said Mr. Leventhal, a founder of the American International Recruitment Council, a group that has developed standards of ethical practices for overseas agents and recognizes those that meet its certification requirements.
“They’re understanding the complexity of the issue,” he said of NACAC, “and they’re going to study it.”
In a statement released late Thursday afternoon, Stephen Foster, current chair and president of the recruitment council, proposed that the two organizations form a joint committee to “work on issues of common concern.” Mr. Foster, who is associate vice president for international affairs at Wright State University, also invited NACAC to nominate one of its members to sit on the council’s certification board, which vets overseas recruiters.
Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, also expressed support for the NACAC board’s approach. “I don’t see any wavering of their commitment to ethical practices,” said Mr. Nassirian, a vocal opponent of commissioned recruiters. “I think it’s reasonable to keep the process open, especially since it’s likely to be consequential once they do take action.”
The NACAC board will name a special commission to consider alternatives to commissioned-based recruiting, discuss ethical standards for recruitment, and suggest new mechanisms to help prospective foreign students better understand American higher education and U.S. colleges to more effectively attract students abroad. The commission will report back to the board and to NACAC’s standing Admission Practices Committee.
Mr. Miller, who is also coordinator of enrollment research at the University of Wisconsin at Superior, said that he expected to appoint 12 to 15 commission members by NACAC’s annual meeting, and that the panel would include those in favor of and those opposed to the practice, as well as people from outside NACAC’s membership.
The commission could recommend that NACAC embrace the use of incentive-based compensation, but Mr. Miller said he expected that the organization’s members ultimately would be asked to vote to expressly forbid colleges to use commission-based agents to recruit abroad.
A ban on paying commissions overseas would bring college-recruitment practices abroad in line with policies domestically, Mr. Miller said. U.S. law prohibits institutions that receive federal financial aid from compensating agents for American students.
There is “strong consensus” on the governing board, Mr. Miller said, that the practice is “not good for students and not good for our members.”
In the interim, however, NACAC will not penalize member colleges for paying agents overseas, he said.
Some college officials that use overseas recruiters had expressed concern that losing NACAC membership could bar them from domestic admissions fairs run by the group and from using the Common Application, the free admissions form accepted by hundreds of American colleges.
Stuck in the Middle
The board’s action is a reflection of how contentious and fraught the debate over commissioned agents has become. NACAC has received more than 300 comment letters on the issue since it announced the proposed policy changes in May.
On one side of the debate are those, including officials with the U.S. State Department, who believe that when recruiters are being paid by colleges, students’ interests are no longer their first priority. Bad-actor agents who misrepresent colleges or press students toward specific campuses in order to meet recruitment quotas could undermine the integrity of American higher education abroad, they worry.
On the other side are advocates for the practice who say that using locally based recruiters can help attract students in an increasingly competitive global market. Not to do so, they argue, is unilateral disarmament, as other countries, like Australia and Britain, already rely on foreign representatives to bring in students. They also say it would not end the use of agents but would rather drive the practice underground.
Many campus officials feel increasingly stuck in the middle, as they weigh the potential recruiting advantages of using commissioned agents with ethical concerns. At a recent forum organized by the State Department, international-admissions administrators expressed their bewilderment, with one woman saying she felt “inadequate,” as the only international-admissions officer at her college, to decide whether to pay agents.
NACAC was originally asked to take up the issue a year ago by its international affiliate, the Overseas Association for College Admissions Counseling. The Admission Practices Committee studied incentive compensation and drafted the proposed policy statement. But Mr. Miller said it became clear the organization needed to further study the issue as well as to provide its members with alternatives to paying commissions.
It was unfair to “abruptly” penalize member colleges that use agents, including more than 90 institutions that are also affiliated with AIRC, he said.
Earlier this week, the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities became the first of the six major higher-education organizations to weigh in, releasing a statement urging “broad-based discussion” about the use of commissioned agents.
