The growth of third-party pathway providers – and of the private capital behind many of them – has helped to create a more competitive and commercialised landscape for recruiting international students, writes Elizabeth Redden for Inside Higher Ed.

But as the number of programmes has grown and competition between corporate pathway providers has increased, some professionals in the international education field have begun raising questions about the firms' recruitment practices, in particular the payment of commissions to recruiting agents that can reach as high as US$9,000 per student enrolment after bonuses are factored in.

The growth of third-party pathway programmes has been entwined with growth in the adoption of commission-based agency recruitment, in which agents are paid a per capita commission for each student recruited to an institution or programme. Federal law prohibits United States universities from paying commissions for the recruitment of domestic American students, but there is no such statutory prohibition when it comes to international students.
Full report on the Inside Higher Ed site