Universities in the UK are increasingly relying on international education agents to recruit students from overseas, with some institutions spending upwards of £9 million on agent commission in the 2021/22 academic year.
In 2021, the University of Exeter paid education agents £9m to recruit 1,800 postgraduate and 750 undergraduate students. Five years previous, agents had netted £2.5m when recruiting 765 PG and 335 UG students.
The University of York – while it did not share how many students had been recruited via agents in the last five years – has also seen a similar growth in commission payments.
