August 07, 2022
UK Commissions Boom: Universities Pay £9m to agents in 2021-2022
U Universities in the UK are increasingly depending on international education agents to recruit foreign students, according to recent data on agent commission. According to media reports, colleges have been paying more in agent commissions than in the past. For instance, in the academic year 2021–2022, universities like York and Exeter spent about £9 million on agent commission.
Universities across the country have raised their budgets for agent commissions in recent years, and Exeter and York are just two examples. Other institutions too have raised the commissions they give to agents. According to reports, some universities paid agents as much as £9.07 million in commission five years after paying them as little as £2.42 million in commission in 2017-18.
Spending on PG recruitment increased in some universities, including Kingston University and Cranfield University, over the same time period, rising from £1.1 million to £3.7 million. Others, like Kingston University, saw an increase in their agent commission spending, which went from £1.4 million in 2017-18 to £7.3 million in 202-21.
The spending pattern indicates a significant reliance on agents to find and attract foreign students to English universities.
...we will not pay anyone commission for sending us a student, nor endorse the services they provide…
The University of Creative Arts, with 365 agreements, reportedly has the most contracts in effect this year. South Wales came in at number two in 2021 with 362 students, followed by DMU with 320, Cardiff Met with 273 that year, and Arts University Bournemouth with 267 in 2022. Despite the fact that many universities have made the decision to disclose their agent fees, some have not.
The University of Warwick is one such institution that chose not to reveal agent spending. They argued that if information and financial compensation were made public, other parties would be able to determine commission rates. Some of the universities that steadfastly resisted disclosing any information included Liverpool, Essex, Newcastle, Cardiff, and Birmingham.
There is also information available on universities that have chosen not to pay agent commissions. According to six institutions—Oxford, Imperial, Cambridge, University of Wales, UHI-West Highland, and the Open University—the recruitment of international students is not handled by agents. A representative of a university who wished to remain anonymous said, "We will not pay commission to anyone for sending us a student, and we will not endorse the services they offer."
A small number of universities with minimal or no spending budgets were also made public by media revelations. From 2018 to 2020/21, York St. John saw an increase in the number of formal agreements with agents, reaching 148 partnerships at that time. In that year, agents hired 48 undergraduates and 680 postgraduates. Agents nevertheless added 85 undergrads and 705 graduate students despite the institution only having 14 agreements in place in 2021/22.
Given the fierce competition for recruiting international students and the rising demand for study abroad programmes, the aforementioned trends and facts imply that agent commissions will increase even more in the future.
Posted in News and tagged News, UK, Universities, Commission, International Education Agents, Foreign Students
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