Congratulations to NACAC (National Association for College Admission Counseling) for producing a guide about how to work with education agents! As more and more US colleges and universities look beyond the borders of the US for students, International Student Recruitment Agencies: A Guide for Schools, Colleges and Universities, will help them to navigate the sometimes rocky shoals of international student recruitment.

NACAC describes the guide  as “a new publication that details concrete steps institutions can take to engage with agencies responsibly. The guide addresses the following steps to sound practice:

• assessing campus readiness to engage in agency-based international student recruitment
• establishing institutional protocols for work with agencies and policy
• developing a contract, with special emphasis on institutional and student protections
• identifying and vetting prospective agency partners
• creating an agency manual and delivering trainings
• monitoring agency performance assessment.

An executive summary and/or the full guide can be downloaded from the NACAC website.

For a summary, check out this article from The PIE News entitled NACAC publishes guide on how to work with agents, from which an excerpt appears below.

NACAC unveiled details of its guide, International Student Recruitment Agencies, on the eve of its 70th national conference, where it will be presented to its membership.

Eddie West, Director of International Initiatives at NACAC, explained that the guide (available online) was planned when NACAC initially revised its Statement of Principles of Good Practice (SPGP) to permit members to use commission-based recruitment practices when working internationally (this practice is not permitted domestically).

“The Assembly felt the association needed to do more than just allow the activity, given the many risks involved, and that it also needed to better define what’s meant by the three principles [of accountability, transparency and integrity that NACAC states must be employed if working with agencies],” he told The PIE News.