National rules for global agents: Challenges of regulation

The business of education agents, as the mediators between international students and higher education institutions, has evolved to the point of ‘professionalisation’. By that, we mean governments are increasingly focused on defining what an agent is, what they should or shouldn’t do, what skills and knowledge are required, what training and certification are appropriate, and what regulation is needed.

These questions are complicated by the international nature of agency work, because governments strategise around international student recruitment with limited control over the offshore agents that send them.

The worldwide industry of education agents

The extent to which higher education institutions rely on agents is below the radar of most academic and professional staff. Few academics could name an agent, let alone articulate the role they play in the journey of their international students from home country to classroom in the host country.

It is estimated by ICEF (International Consultants for Education and Fairs) that there are 22,000 agencies operating globally.

The higher education data analytics firm Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) states that 22% of students worldwide use an agent, but the numbers are much higher in major destination countries such as the United Kingdom (50%) and Australia (86%).

However, authoritative data and information about education agents are generally lacking and tend to emanate from, and relate to, the high-volume recruiting countries. A significant milestone in the professionalisation of education agents was the joint publication by Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and the UK of the Statement of Principles for the Ethical Recruitment of International Students by Education Agents and Consultants in 2012.

The United States and Canada also participated in the roundtable forum from which this statement emerged. Ostensibly, its catalyst was concerns about the ethical behaviour of education agents, but it also marked an attempt by the traditional power centres to dictate the terms of the industry’s professionalisation. The very name – the London Statement – makes clear where the centre lies.

In the coming years, we can expect to see policy directives, legislative instruments and training regimes implemented by governments around the world as the parameters of international agency activity are defined in the national interest but shaped by global forces.

Vietnam is one such example, because it is both a source of, and destination for, international students (full degree and short-term mobility) and therefore an active location for education agencies. As such, it is beginning to set its own rules for agent operations within its borders.

The Vietnamese context

Vietnam is the world’s fourth-highest sending country of international tertiary students, estimated by UNESCO to have 134,000 students abroad in 2022.

The common practice for parents and students interested in overseas education is to look on foreign university websites for information about education agencies as these agents have been recognised as ‘certified’ in the eyes of foreign institutions.

Regarding inbound students, the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) estimates that there were 22,000 international students in the country in 2023. Agents have minimal involvement with these students because they tend to arrive via overseas-funded short-term study arrangements (for example, Australia’s New Colombo Plan or Europe’s Erasmus programme) or via MOET-approved direct application from neighbouring countries, such as Laos and Cambodia.

Internal MOET data estimates that there are over 2,800 education agents, but makes no clear distinction between which agents are local or foreign.

In Ha Noi, as of February 2024, around 1,100 education agents were given business permits to conduct overseas study consultancies, while approximately 800 agents were permitted to operate in Ho Chi Minh City. The most prominent agencies are IDP (multinational), Duc Anh, Avenue to Success (ATS) and SET Education.

Governance, training and certification

Vietnamese agents’ activities are controlled by the Department of Education and Training (DET), which has a lower authority than MOET. The latter is the highest governmental body overseeing educational activities of all kinds in Vietnam.

Three government bills strongly determine the management of Vietnamese education agents. The first is Decree 46 (Prescribing Regulatory Requirements for Educational Investment and Operation), introduced in 2017 as an initial attempt to confer official status upon education agencies and agents.

This obliged all agencies to apply for business registration with the DET and provide a list of any employees working as agents, including their names, job titles, responsibilities and English proficiency levels. It was also decreed that all individual agents had to meet three requirements: have a bachelor degree, have a minimum International English Language Testing System score of 6.5 and obtain MOET’s Overseas Education Consulting Training Programme Certificate.

The skills and knowledge areas obtained through the certificate were clarified in a second bill in 2022 (Circular 1: Regarding the Introduction of the Overseas Education Consulting Training Programme).

It prescribed six compulsory modules (70 50-minute periods of theory and 160 periods of in-class discussion and practice):

• The law, policies and socialist ideology of Vietnamese education;

• The education system of Vietnam and other countries;

• The skills required for agent counselling (for instance, professional ethics and visa advice);

• The business-related skills required for events and marketing;

• Knowledge of overseas markets (cultural, religious, regulatory, demographic etc); and

• Practice-based learning (operationalising the above modules through scenarios and case studies).

Punitive regulation

Despite these regulations, agents’ activities were not so easily controlled, and reports of unethical activities continued to circulate in the state media (a government mouthpiece).

For example, The People (Nhân Dân) newspaper, run by the Central Agency of the Communist Party of Vietnam, highlighted dishonest agency practices, such as relocation to different venues to avoid inspection, misleading and inaccurate delivery of information to parents and students, failing to inform students and parents about their application status, and even forging or falsifying students’ academic and financial documents.

A third bill – Decree 88/2022/ND-CP (Penalties for Administrative Violations against Regulations on Vocational Education and Training) – was introduced in 2022 to establish a structured punishment frame for different kinds of violations in educational activities. It remains to be seen what impact this bill will have.

Interestingly, procedural violations (for example, operating without a lawful permit) are more heavily fined than ethical violations (such as the misleading of students or parents).

Gaps and tensions

Although international education is a major global enterprise, few education agencies are more than three decades old. The industry’s professionalisation is an evolving phenomenon, both at the national and international levels, as shown by Vietnam’s legislative reforms and the London Statement respectively.

Education agents are not defined, trained, certified or regulated in the same way in every country, despite operating in a global market. Changes occurring in large non-Anglophone countries, such as Vietnam, often go unreported in the media and academic literature of the English-speaking world, resulting in knowledge gaps.

Vietnam’s compulsory agent training module on socialist education philosophy is an example of local nuance. It will be interesting to observe the differences and tensions between the professionalisation of agents in the highest-sending countries like Vietnam and the highest-receiving countries like the UK and Australia.

Another tension will be between government and industry, with powerful corporations, such as IDP, possibly lobbying against government control, and independent organisations, such as ICEF, seeking to commercialise the training and accreditation space.

Phuoc Hoang is a PhD candidate in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Griffith University, Australia. Phuoc’s research interests are international student mobility, education agents and the Australian school sector. Phuoc has gained professional experience working as an education agent in Vietnam and an in-country representative at Flinders University, Adelaide. Ben Fenton-Smith is director, international, of Griffith University’s arts, education and law group, and is an associate professor in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science. His research on international education and applied linguistics can be found here. Ly Tran is a professor in the School of Education and Research for Educational Impact (REDI), Deakin University, Australia. Ly has published extensively on internationalisation of education, international students, international graduate employability, Indo-Pacific student mobility and comparative and Vietnamese higher education. Ly’s research and publications can be found in this profile.

Commentary articles are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of University World News.