How will the changes introduced by IRCC stir a ripple effect across the international education industry in Canada?
How will the changes introduced by IRCC stir a ripple effect across the international education industry in Canada?
Canada is shifting its approach to international student recruitment through a new round of policy updates announced by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) this week. How will these changes stir a ripple effect across the international education industry?
To shed light on the reason behind the reform and its impact on institutions, agents and students, MSM Reporter spoke with Earl Blaney, founder of the edTech platform Study2Stay.
The Canadian government is rolling out sweeping changes to its International Student Program (ISP), while Global Affairs Canada has begun consulting on the next iteration of the country’s intl ed strategy, which then prompted Universities Canada (UC) to issue its statement/submission on the matter. What do you think are the primary drivers of all these recent moves?
The significance of changes have yet to be determined. So far, IRCC has committed to a comprehensive Letter of Acceptance Verification (LOAv) system and implementing a Recognized Institution Framework. IRCC also just doubled fund requirements for room and board form 10,000 CAD to just over $20,000 CAD which is a substantial change aimed at ensuring students can well afford cost of living AND likely to disuade applicants who cannot really afford to study in Canada in the first place.
The Minister has hinted at other incremental changes, including a review and potential revisions to Canada’s Post Graduate Work Permit (PGWP) program.
Regulation of education agents has been another issue mentioned out loud. Updates to Canada’s Immigration system happen periodically, and one occurred this year. Updates to Global Affairs Canada (GAC) International Education plan have occurred every five years since 2014. These two independent reviews and consultations just happened to coincide this year.
There has been increasing pressure on IRCC for several years to address program integrity problems impacting Canada’s International Study Program (ISP) which threaten Canada’s international reputation. These concerns relate mainly to international student recruitment, quality of education student support and graduate outcomes. More recently, the political will to act, was spurred by a realization that sheer volumes of international students in Canada and the impact on Canada’s housing shortage crises.
Universities Canada (UC) is a longstanding federal lobby group aimed at promoting institutional autonomy and the interests of its 90+ institution membership. It should be no surprise that UC would want to be on record with a position that might help guide favourable government policy.
Where are agents most beneficial for students and for institutions? Where do they bring in the most value?
The smaller or lesser known the institution, the more likely they are to be highly dependent on agent recruitment. Agents play a crucial role in marketing and establishing a market presence for institutions overseas. Aggregators have become much more involved in institutional admissions processes and standards, and at times seek exclusive control over an institution’s recruitment process, which doesn’t jive much with cries for institutional autonomy.
Agents have the most value to an institution when they source high volumes of bona fide students likely to succeed (both through the visa and the academic process) and are well familiar with the institution and the region they are promoting.
For prospective students, agents provide the most value when they are forthright in marketing, highly knowledgeable about the institution they are promoting, and well-trained in processes to support a successful application.
The above ideal outcomes are most likely produced by direct recruitment agreements between agents and education institutions. There is a direct line of communication and oversight responsibility.
With sub-agent recruitment models, because there is no direct contract between the school and the on-the-ground recruiting party, there is legitimate concern about compromising everything mentioned above, except volume. If a school no longer has a connection with the recruiting party on the ground, they would have to have full faith that the empowering third party is adept at supervision.
Awkwardly, the third party in this scenario stands to profit substantially by increasing the volume of its sub-agent network that builds capacity to send more students. Some aggregators report to investors they have amassed upwards of 10,000 sub-agents. That number, and the remote online relationship that governs it, suggests challenges in maintaining adequate supervision. This context does not resonate as the proper model by which to ensure consumer protection.
The new book Student Recruitment Agents in International Higher Education, examining how agents fit into the intl ed sector, says that HEIs have a choice of whether to engage with agents or not. Do you share this belief? If HEIs choose not to use agents, what alternatives to recruiting students exist?
UC’s brief also notes that some of its member institutions do not use agents at all. The main issue is that MOST of Canada’s Designated Learning Institutions (DLIs) do not excel in global rankings and are typically lesser known. This makes them highly dependent on two things: (1) Canada’s International reputation (the value of Brand Canada) and (2) marketing exposure in local markets. There are several ways of accomplishing the latter, be it through the use of agents or a direct presence in said market.
It’s a lot cheaper to use agents—or so the argument goes. Definitely, it is easier.
In Canada, the use and value of education agents is well-recognized. The use of education agents is not up for debate. The focus is on addressing the lack of supervision, a lack of transparency and ensuring some reasonable level of ethical conduct is established and maintained.
There have also been concerns expressed—for example, by the Auditor General of Ontario—about how much money is being diverted to recruitment parties. Others are concerned about who exactly is receiving this money.
Universities Canada said: ‘While we welcome shining a light on bad actors and disreputable ghost agencies, we encourage cautious policy making as to not impinge on institutional autonomy nor recognize the various levels of internationalization and the challenges at institutions across Canada.’ How do you make sense of this statement?
One of the declared missions of UC is to promote institutional autonomy. However, as I am sure UC is aware, institutional autonomy exists largely at the discretion of the government. When universities are functioning well in their important roles in supporting the best interests of students and society and when public trust is high, governments have traditionally been hands off. But when that is not the case, governments have traditionally stepped in, or on, to varying degrees.
For example: concerns over the security of university R&D [research and development] might cause the government of Canada to impede on autonomy by vetting research contracts or prohibiting partnerships. Outside direction might also be necessary to guide skilled graduates towards areas of urgent labor market need, or to guide stronger graduate labor market outcomes. Or to set minimum required standards related to infrastructure like housing and student supports. Or guidelines aimed at maintaining competitive academic standards. Or to improve international student recruitment integrity.
According to Global Affairs Canada, all the above (and others) are currently areas of concerns worth considering for the university sector. Ironically, this may be the case precisely because there has been too much institutional autonomy. From the government’s viewpoint, international students and graduates have not only become an integral part of the post-secondary sector and international trade, but also as a source of new economic class immigrants. Governments, which still invest large sums of capital in post-secondary [education], have a keen interest in these outcomes. Some Universities Canada members are a strong representation of the best schools Canada has to offer international students, but that certainly does not mean all institutions, by virtue of membership alone, deserve the same degree of autonomy.
For example, when Universities Canada asserts “universities are incredibly selective when issuing letters of acceptance,” it cannot mean all universities, let alone all its member universities. There are records of:
Universities issuing near five times the number of letters of acceptance than the number of students they manage to enroll.
[You cannot have] member institutions be in any way associated with a “Black Friday sales promotion” facilitated by an aggregator platform and hold the position that you have integrity entirely under control. But these are the kinds of things that are happening. These are not fertile grounds to argue for autonomy.
The other sore point in the UC submission was the declaration that “many of its institutions have established strong agent policies.” First, the omission of “all” raises significant concern given the risks students face in dealing with unethical recruiters. Secondly, how does UC conclude these standards are “strong”? In the absence of government regulation, or even self-regulation standards, what is the benchmark for a strong institutional policy in relation to agents? In the absence of any publicly available evidence—the results of an audit, for example—this assertion smacks of a self-serving declaration.
In light of issues arising from agent fraud and misconduct, does the industry need more regulation or should there simply be better enforcement of existing rules?
The short answer is we need both codification of new regulations and the enforcement of existing ones. We also need to decide what party is going to be responsible for enforcement.
In the Canadian context, with the exception of the province of Manitoba, there has been no regulatory framework developed by provinces. And while the province of Manitoba stands out as the sole framework in place, there appears to be little political will to enforce the regulations that do exist in that province.
For example, in the first four years of the Manitoba International Education Act (MIEA) regulatory regime coming into effect (2016-20), the government of Manitoba only engaged in five investigative actions, or notices of intended action towards enforcing regulations on the books. The responsible authority in Manitoba also refused to investigate a complaint that called into question whether by nature aggregator recruitment models could be compliant with existing regulations, which charge designated education providers with the responsibility to monitor recruiter compliance with the code. Neither the Act nor its regulations contemplate outsourcing this crucial responsibility to third party aggregators.
At the federal level, Canada has long ago established law, with the explicit goal of consumer protection in mind, under Section 91 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which prohibits unauthorized practitioners from providing immigration services for compensation. A decade ago, back in 2013, IRCC Director General Caroline Melis issued a compliance directive to Canadian DLI’s to clarify that this standard applied to international recruiters (compensated by commission payments) who provided services for study permits (which is part and parcel of most education agent services).
Further still, IRCC has a policy in place at missions overseas to refuse to process applications submitted by non-authorized representatives but routinely ignore this policy, likely because it would have a negative impact on outbound volumes of students. When the federal government waives existing consumer protection standards to help facilitate financial gain, what type of example does this set for others?
What is the role of governments, institutions, and their gatekeeping in international recruitment, particularly in light of the industry’s self-regulation?
Arguments related to the limits of federal jurisdiction to enforce these policies outside of Canada should be taken with a grain of salt. After all, the overseas missions where these applications are being reviewed ARE under Canadian federal jurisdiction. So, too, are Canadian DLIs and in some cases aggregator companies, which are the source of compensation.
Canada’s decision to decline to become a signatory of the London Statement (principles for ethical student recruitment) was allegedly based on jurisdictional conflict between the provinces and the federal government over enforcement measures. This jurisdictional dispute, rooted in the Canadian constitution’s separation of powers, holds education to be exclusively within provincial jurisdiction and immigration under concurrent (shared) jurisdiction.
While some continue to argue jurisdictional limitations should limit federal overreach, there is a well-established case law to support the paramountcy of federal jurisdiction when operational conflicts arise. Further, there is precedent for IRCC to vet the bonafides and conditions experienced by other temporary resident arrivals – for example, by screening employers and working conditions of workers arriving under the temporary foreign worker program.
The jurisdictional split has caused the federal government to be cautious in its approach. But it does now seem that the federal government is prepared to take a more aggressive role, with the (new) Immigration Minister Marc Miller having already put the provinces on notice.
How does the edtech aggregator model complicate (a) institutional partnerships, and (b) regulation or attempts to do it? Do you see it as a solution or one that aggravates an existing problem?
In the context of aggregator recruitment, it is deeply concerning for some that institutions are often completely isolated from the education agents who are facilitating on-the-ground recruiting for them. This also gives the institution no ability to review what that messaging may involve.
My intuition tells me that there might be an executive level lack of understanding of what edtech aggregator recruitment exactly entails.
Unless you don’t fully understand what aggregator recruitment is, you can’t (as Universities Canada has, in its GAC submission) “welcome shining light on ghost agencies” and at the same time support aggregator recruitment platforms that hold ghost agencies as the core of their recruitment model.
I also noted the Auditor General of Ontario’s recent recommendations to DLIs (2021) that clearly fails to appreciate the nature of aggregator recruitment as follows: “the Ministry of Colleges and Universities require public colleges to monitor the agencies’ advertisements at a regular intervals…to confirm they are factually correct, and that any errors or other misleading advertisements found are corrected in a timely manner; and (to) collect data related to fees paid to recruitment agencies, and assess the reasonableness of the fees paid on a per student basis.”
Similar to the MIEA conundrum (discussed above) these recommendations from the Auditor General, geared towards student protections, simply are not actionable in the aggregator context. That is because education institutions often are not even aware of which of the aggregators’ agents or sub-agents are involved in direct marketing and sales to their students. Further and as a consequence, the institutions would have no idea how much these sub-agents might be charging students.
Can you provide further examples to illustrate the complexities of the aggregator model?
The same dilemma presents itself in the recent Colleges Ontario self-regulation initiative, where colleges are charged with oversight of agents and recruitment partners, something they have long ago outsourced, in most cases, to edtech aggregators. Most aggregator platforms seem committed to a lack of transparency about which sub-agents work under their banner.
I recently asked a senior executive of a well-known aggregator platform why there would be such a reservation. The reply was that sub-agents would resent having the impression of their expertise and professionalism compromised if clients realized they had no direct connection with the institutions they were recruiting for. That is not a good foundation for honest client interaction.
Worse perhaps, I have been in contact with recruitment directors at major Canadian public institutions that did not themselves understand the aggregator platforms they are contracted to rely on sub-agent recruitment. This calls into question the level of transparency that exists between the institution and the aggregator as well.
Students are no longer assured their agents are highly familiar with respective schools, programs, or regions they now have marketing and commission access to. With newfound access to as many schools to recruit for—as there are movies on Netflix—it seems unlikely that the agent would have a high familiarity with more than a select few, but is equally qualified to recruit for all?
Now education agents are recruiting for everyone, and often for schools in multiple countries. How might this impact their student counseling competency? Further, the association between the explosion in numbers of new agents and the emergence of aggregator platforms is no coincidence; aggregator platforms make it easier to become an education agent. There is anecdotal evidence in Canada and supporting government research out of Australia that suggests an institution’s reliance on inexperienced agents, to navigate successful immigration results for their students, may be leading to historically low visa approval rates. Full transparency on sub-agent visa success rate would be needed to confirm, no one should be expecting access.
There is no question that when combined—the mass volume of applications gathered via online aggregator platforms, from enormous sub-agent networks, has drastically increased the volume of applications to even the lowest tiered education institutions in Canada. We are talking about waiting lists of international students eager to mortgage family fortunes to enroll in a school no domestic student has ever set foot in, nor would.
The simple fact is that schools have discovered if they issue Letters of Acceptance (LOAs) to most of those vast number of recruited applicants – a higher number of students will eventually overwhelm and pass through immigration screening, despite the fact that the same methodology (flooding the embassy with mass volumes) has caused dramatic increases in the overall study permit refusal rates. This approach has made it tougher for “the best and the brightest,” typically headed to universities, to get their visas, too.
Aggregators are international educations’ version of ocean trawlers, the ones that led to the largest industrial closure in Canadian history and the collapse of Atlantic Canada’s economy. Aggregators are not gentle beings. They are enormous corporate entities, some with strong personal government connections, that scoop up everything on the ocean floor, dump their nets en masse at Canadian visa processing centers, and let visa officers sort through what might not belong. IRCC is having a tough time doing so, and that has been one of the catalysts forcing federal action.
How do you see changes to the ISP playing out and affecting or benefiting institutions, agents, and students?
I don’t expect an end to pushback from the education lobby and institutions themselves, who of course have some reason to be concerned. But this is also an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to worry more about Canada’s international reputation, international student outcomes, and achieving program excellence than about institutional autonomy. It is going to be hard to argue that institutional autonomy did not play a part in getting us here.
As they say, rules are made for the lowest common denominator, and I doubt most universities find their way to a sub-RI classification. But there will be some and probably when segregation occurs, I will have thought more should have been included. There is some expectation of a systematic bias favoring public institutions. It is widely expected that the RI framework will be more impactful on community colleges, where the bulk of concerns lie.
A positive is that the classification system gets ALL universities and other designated learning institutions, as well as provincial governments, thinking about how to best perform in the criteria used to evaluate an institution’s standing. This should have the effect of moving benchmarks and outcomes along collectively at a much faster pace than could be accomplished autonomously.
For agents and aggregator platform sub-agents, this may mark the onset of accountability. Access to recruit for limited seats at Recognized Institutions is likely to become a lot more competitive. This is because DLIs are likely to become much more concerned about quality, dedicated recruits and quality of immigration support being provided. Not all agents are likely to perform at the same level in these regards, so there is some potential for inexperienced or poorer-performing agents getting stuck recruiting for Tier 2 schools.
If I were a post-secondary institution, I would want to know much more about sub-agents’ student screening processes and to have a strong degree of confidence in the agents submitting my student visa applications to IRCC. These considerations may help the cream rise to the top and inject some much needed transparency into the aggregator recruitment process.
For bonafide students, the IR framework will provide more transparent quality guidelines to attest to the quality of their investment and satisfy matrix scores. If those matrix scores are reasonably connected to positive student experiences, this framework will benefit students.
Prospective edu-immigration students do need to be mindful that the weakness of the matrix in enhancing permanent immigration outcomes is that it takes a holistic institution approach, whereas the strongest indicators for edu-immigrant success are specific to program and client specific bio-factors, which are not factors the criteria for the matrix considers.
