Higher Education Intermediaries

This chapter considers the role that intermediaries (such as education agents and counsellors) play in facilitating and structuring international student mobilities. To provide some wider context, the chapter begins with a short overview of the different forms that intermediaries may take in a higher education context. As the growing presence of these intermediaries corresponds to increasing demand for higher education overseas and a neoliberalisation of the higher education system, there follows some elaboration of these developments and how this has created greater opportunities for third-party involvement in student recruitment. The chapter considers the dynamics associated with such partnerships and the impact that they can have on patterns of international student mobility.