Claims that overseas-recruitment agents should be "eliminated" have provoked anger from a US body developing standards of ethical practice in the area. In an interview with Times Higher Education, Mitch Leventhal, vice-president and treasurer of the American International Recruitment Council (AIRC), said US institutions needed to accept that recruitment agents were "here to stay".

Dr.Mitch Leventhal & Jonathan Weller with visiting Lankan recruiters Priyanthi & Padmasena Dissanayake - University of Cincinnati Summer

US universities traditionally have had ethical reservations about the use of agents, but Dr Leventhal said that institutions had become more accepting of them in the past two years after a period of using them "furtively". However, in a recent paper in the journal International Higher Education, Philip Altbach, director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, proves that resistance to the use of international-recruitment agents is still present in some quarters of the US sector.
Professor Altbach calls the agents "a spectre...haunting international higher education" and argues it is "high time these operators are eliminated".

Dr Leventhal called Professor Altbach's views "arrogant, naive or both". "Philip Altbach has made huge contributions to the study of international education over the years and I am an admirer of his work," Dr Leventhal said. "However, on this issue he is out of his depth."

He continued: "It is arrogant to believe that the US government has the power or the right to interfere with the regulations of hundreds of national governments; it is naive to believe that the world's governments can come together...to do the same, when agreeing on issues such as global warming or nuclear proliferation - issues of more generalised importance - continues to elude us."

The AIRC argues that international-recruitment agents should be subject to a set of rigorous, official standards to eliminate abuse and unethical behaviour. A paper released by the body last week acknowledges that it is "difficult" for colleges and universities to make informed decisions on selecting agencies because of a lack of quality assurance in the area.

The AIRC has launched a 10-step certification process that it hopes can be rolled out worldwide.
"It requires a shift from American institutions to accepting that these recruitment agents are here to stay," said Dr Leventhal, who is also vice-chancellor for global affairs at the State University of New York.
He added that "students will use them whether the institutions choose to engage with them or not".
The number of institutions using international-recruitment agents was difficult to track, but was "significantly more" than the AIRC's current membership, which stands at 125 higher education institutions, he said.

The AIRC paper says that an increasing number of US institutions are starting to use international agents more openly and argues that agents have an "important place" in recruitment.
Dr Leventhal compared the current "open" situation with that of a decade ago, when institutional attitudes towards international-recruitment agents reminded him of attitudes towards homosexuality at the time of Oscar Wilde's trial.

"A lot were doing it but they were afraid...that it would cause reputational risk," he explained.
Universities elsewhere have long relied on agents to attract fee-paying students from abroad and Dr Leventhal admitted that the US had not been as quick to adapt to changes in the global-recruitment market as other countries.

"We're a gigantic higher education system...The bigger something is, the slower is the change," he said.
Dr Leventhal concluded by advising Professor Altbach to "leave it to the experts".
sarah.cunnane@tsleducation.com.
Some readers' comments

Gavin 20 January, 2011
While sections of the US education system still see the need to debate what is already a standard - ethical & professional - practice for counselling foreign students with their educational & life changing decisions; educators from Europe, Asia & the Pacific charge ahead diversifying their student body with the help of quality agents.
I support Dr Leventhal's work in this sector & trust that such selective, narrow & offensive views expressed by Mr Altbach will soon recede into the past.

liz reisberg 20 January, 2011
Comparing resistance to agents with Oscar Wild's trial??? Now there's a reach! I would think that Dr. Leventhal could do better than that.
The problem of working with agents is (and always has been) the problem of incentives. I have worked in the field of international admissions for nearly 30 years. When agents are involved it is very difficult to insure that decisions are made in the best interest of the student because the incentives are skewed towards the agent and the institution. This does not preclude agents providing good service, but the rewards do not depend on that. To believe that an independent agency can provide the necessary oversight to regulate this activity is naive. As I said, it's all about the incentives.

Mitch Leventhal 21 January, 2011
To Ms. Reisberg and others who may be bewildered by the reference to Oscar Wilde... I'd just like to say that the reference was made not to the trial. But rather to the fact that, in the US, until recently universities who have worked with agents have done so furtively, "in the closet," attempting to draw as little attention to themselves as possible, much like Wilde's "love that dare not speak its name." I fear that the way this was reported distracts a bit from my point.

Cyndy Marchese 21 January, 2011
Congratulations to Mitch Leventhal for his continued effort to bring using agents to the forefront in international recruiting. I have been in international recruiting for over twenty years and have found students who come from agents to be well versed about our programmes and our country. It will always be up to the institution to monitor how their institution is presented and to train agents to represent them in a professional manner. Those who do this well will be rewarded.

Ross Jennings 21 January, 2011
We are proud to be charter members of AIRC. We use agents extensively, but qualify them according to strict standards, initially and based on performance. The qualification element is why we so strongly support the idea behind AIRC. To admissions officers at selective universities, their dealings may involve frequent attempts by agencies to game the system on behalf of marginally or unqualified applicants. In our case, we realize that community college transfer programmes are still not well understood abroad, and we need credible agents who know about our programme, and us, to represent us with potential clients. Like any service providers (travel agents, teachers, doctors, lawyers, rabbis), there are good and bad. We do our best to work only with the good, for the benefit of our students, and of our institution.

Stephen Foster 21 January, 2011
In response to Ms Reisberg's problem with agent incentives: I would think that the incentive for the recruiting agent is the same as for brokers or agents in most businesses and professions -- to serve the client well (serve their interests) so as to build his or her reputation and client base, to be more competitive and ultimately to succeed professionally.

Rahul Choudaha, PhD 23 January, 2011
I agree with Dr. Altbach and Dr. Reisberg that issues of incentives make it very difficult to accept that agents can work in students' interest and uphold high ethical standards. However, they are a neccessary evil and they do serve a specific segment of students who need hand-holding in making choice and likewise there are institutions which do not have enough cache to attract students on their own. The issue is not the importance of the role of agents as counsellors and match-makers, rather ethical standards of the process involved. Thus, anything that makes the process transparent, lives upto the ethical standards and works in the interests of the students should be acceptable.

AIRC's certification process is one such solution for quality assurance in agency-model. However, I believe that the agency-model itself may face disintermediation through Internet technology and information dissemination. Internet has already transformed several industries which traditionally relied on agency-based models like computers (Dell), travel (expedia), real estate and bookstores (amazon). Likewise, in the internatioal recruitment market, Internet will emerge as an unexpected and sudden disintermediary where more students will connect directly with universities. Lets not forget that facebook already has 20 million and 25 million users from India and Turkey respectively and its not difficult to guess their demographics.

Rahul Choudaha, PhD
www.DrEducation.com
timeshighereducation.co.uk