There is a lot of talk in Australia these days on the subject of fraud and corruption in how international students are recruited and dealt with.
To begin with, there is a great deal of concern over academic standards slipping because of pressure on professors to push international students – which represent a fifth of total enrolment in Australia’s post-secondary institutions – through the system, even when their academic performance is below standards. A recent report on international students in Australia from a governmental anti-corruption commission states that the post-secondary system in New South Wales is so dependent on international students that they cannot afford to fail them. The short term problems include international students not receiving the support they need (or education they hoped for). One of the long-term problems is that the quality of education as a whole declines, the schools’ reputations decline along with it.
A further dimension is that Australian media has been publishing numerous stories and reports on problems in the recruitment of these international students. In Australian post-secondary institutions, the use of recruiters to find international students is wide-spread (while it has been a fairly uncommon practice in the US). It is argued that these recruiters are paid on a “per head” basis and therefore it is unsurprising to find that many of them encourage students to doctor their credentials. Fraud and misrepresentation, in other words, are huge problems.
Read more in Inside Higher Ed, which also makes the point that these problems should be considered carefully as there is more interest in the US to start using more independent agents to recruit international students.