The practice of using commissioned agents to bring in foreign students to American colleges and universities came under sharp criticism during an international-education conference organized by the U.S. State Department, with one panelist comparing it to contracting out the student-recruitment process to a car salesman.
“It’s destructive of the very function of admissions,” said Barmak Nassirian, an associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. “The credibility of American higher education is at risk if we begin to parcel out pieces of it like car sales.”
Mr. Nassirian spoke during the first day of the EducationUSA Forum, which drew more than 250 U.S. college representatives as well as advisers from EducationUSA centers in 40 countries. The network of more than 400 centers worldwide is the main means through which the government promotes American higher education abroad.
The State Department prohibits its EducationUSA student-advising centers from working with commercial recruiting agents who have contracts to represent specific American universities.
“We don’t want there to be a sense of bias,” said Diane Weisz Young, an EducationUSA program officer and the chair of the session on incentive-based recruiting, in explaining the policy. “Any partnering we would do with agents automatically would create a sense of bias.”
The practice of paying overseas agents for the students they recruit has become more contentious as it has grown more common among American colleges. Proponents say it can help attract students in an increasingly competitive global student market, and they note that other countries, like Australia and Britain, rely on foreign representatives to bring in students.
But a primary membership group for admissions officials, the National Association for College Admission Counseling, or NACAC, has released a proposed policy statement that would expressly forbid colleges from using commission-based agents to recruit domestically or internationally. (Institutions cannot pay commissions for domestic students if they receive federal financial-aid funds.)
David Hawkins, NACAC’s director of public policy and research and a panelist, said the admissions group just ended a comment period on the proposed policy and was reviewing the responses from its members, which he characterized as varied. NACAC’s board could vote on the policy next month.
Still, Mr. Hawkins questioned paying commissions to student recruiters, saying the practice, when used by for-profit institutions in the United States, had proved “disastrous” in the past. “It creates an incentive to marginalize students’ interests,” he said.
“The fact that we are having a discussion now is a paradigm shift,” he added. “It’s rubbing up against decades of accumulated wisdom and accumulated professional standards.”
Some audience members, however, questioned whether a national organization like NACAC should tell individual universities how to conduct their admissions strategies. If the policy is approved, institutions that pay commissions could be barred from the domestic college fairs NACAC runs, said Christopher Lucier of the University of Vermont.
“You’re really using a hammer to legislate decisions that are really university decisions,” Mr. Lucier said, to applause.
Indeed, it is clear that college officials in attendance are wrestling with the ethics of using agents. One woman said she felt “inadequate,” as the only international-admissions officer at her college, to decide whether to pay agents. Another questioned the difference between paying an agent and compensating an alumnus who helps vet overseas applicants.
“Higher education is becoming a global economy,” said a third audience member, Linda McKinnish Bridges, from Wake Forest University. “Twenty years ago it was sneakers, 10 years ago it was furniture, now it’s education. Is it reality to accept it, or to fight against it?”
One person who was clear about where he stood was Mr. Nassirian. “It’s a very simple proposition,” Mr. Nassirian said. “It stinks to high heaven.”
In his comments, Mr. Nassirian criticized the American International Recruiting Council, a group that has begun to set standards for and accredit overseas recruiters, calling its efforts “laughably inadequate.”
“It’s like attempting to regulate bribery overseas so it is done ethically,” he said.
Officials for the recruiting group, which is known as AIRC, were not present at the event, and no supporters of paying overseas commissions were included on the panel. In an e-mail message, Mitch Leventhal, AIRC’s founder, called Mr. Nassirian “long on bombast and short on facts.”
“It is unconscionable to stand in the way of these developments, which are aimed at protecting students and which are being undertaken from within the mainstream of American higher education,” said Mr. Leventhal, who is vice chancellor for global affairs at the State University of New York. “Rather than inventing facts, these critics would be well served to read the AIRC standards and suggest specific modifications, which will lead to a better outcome.”
One audience member, Roger Brindley of the University of South Florida, challenged Mr. Nassirian’s statements. “To him, it’s black and white, but I think we have to recognize shades of gray,” said Mr. Brindley, whose institution has actively sought to bring in more foreign students. “It’s a complicated issue, and I worry when we create polarizing policy.”
