As enrollment of international students at U.S. colleges thins, Ohio University is paying overseas recruiting agents to drum up numbers. -
and last year we saw a 13 percent increase said T. David Garcia, director of Admissions, in an earlier interview.
Like other recruiting agents, JJL takes money from both the students it helps and the colleges that accept them. OU signed up with the company as other four-year schools began to more actively pursue international students earlier this decade, said Vicki Seefeldt West, coordinator of International Outreach and Recruitment.
JJL is one of seven overseas recruiters under contract with OU, which pays a commission of $1,000 for each undergraduate or 10 percent of the first year's tuition for students studying only English, which amounts to just over $1,000.
That fee is low-end compared to other institutions, said Josep Rota, associate provost for International Affairs.
Based on what I've done with other colleagues most institutions pay between 10 to 25 percent of the first year's tuition
Rota said. We pay less than pretty much anybody in the country.
After failing an entrance exam at her second Chinese university, Xiaoxi Li, a 20-year-old communications major from Beijing, decided to go abroad. -
but we have a very stringent ethical code that all recruiters have to sign on in the contract
Rota said. As far as we are concerned
we are really following not just the spirit but the letter of the contract in the ethics code.
Because recruiting agents provide a two-fold service, one to students and the other to universities, they deserve two fees, Rota said.
We're not paying the agents a fee for what they do for the students; we're paying them a fee for what they do for us
he said.
Paying recruiters actually keeps them accountable, West said.
If we weren't to have compensation for the agents as a university
there's not really much of interest for them to perform as well
West said. This allows us a level of quality control.
Recruiting becomes essential as the U.S. falls out of favor with international students at the same time that competition for their favor heightens, Rota said.
Last year, international students brought $13 billion to the U.S. economy, making international-student education the fifth largest export in the service sector, Rota said.-
50 percent of all the students in the world traveling to another country to study came to the U.S.
