The Education Agents’ Conference: Encouraging International Student Recruitment and Facilitating Migration Industries

The recruitment of international students is a big business and has developed into a major export industry over the last thirty years. In a UK context, it has been estimated that a healthy international student community contributes some £2.5 billion in fees (Lange 2013), without taking into account how their spending power and high level skills which they can bring to the job market on graduation could contribute to the economy. This has given rise to an international student migration industry with universities and a variety of third parties working to facilitate their mobility. Higher education agents (who work on a commission basis for universities) are one such third party. At any one time, agents may have arrangements with multiple universities, so universities often invest considerable energy and resources encouraging them to recruit on their behalf. This paper analyses the use of the education agents' conference as a vehicle for encouraging student recruitment. It analyses interview data with university international offices in the UK together with observations from an education agents' conference to offer insights into the complexities of this relationship and investigate how policy reform influences this elite migration.