Jun 11, 2016 08:02 AM EDT By Vinay Patel, UniversityHerald Reporter

Over the last three years, international student recruitment process in the United States has undergone a major overhaul, with merely one-third of US-based universities now collaborating directly with education agents in a bid to aid the international student recruitment procedure.

A new comprehensive research delving into the agencies' pace of adoption as a recruitment medium in collaboration with U.S. universities and also looking into the impact of specific market forces as well as public opinion on the adoption process was unveiled at the NAFSA conference held in Denver.

Nearly one-third of the 131 universities that replied to the survey noted that they plunged into adapting agent recruitment channels since the last three years. In 2015, the aforementioned universities admitted 22% of their entire international student enrollment into United States through an agency partnership.

About 12% of institutions that did not directly team up with agents collaborated with pathway operators and obliquely empowered counselling agencies to aid the student recruitment process.

These crucial findings were cited in a report launched by StudentMarketing and sanctioned by Denver-based Bridge Education Group.

The research was completed in 6 months and it analysed 131 universities (which between them accounted for 93,391 foreign students) and also encompassed mystery shopper initiative which involved student approaching 454 universities and inquiring about partner agency in their country.

The research pointed out that in comparison to the usage rates in other countries, the pace of adoption can be tagged as discreet. In addition, the lack of trust prevents US-based institutions to work zealously with student recruitment companies.

Analyzing 343 education agencies from 64 agencies, the report compares the predicted proportion of international student admissions through agencies in primary education destinations - at 62%, Australia grabbed the No. 1 spot as far as embedding agency relationships into foreign student recruitment process is concerned. Canada wasn't far behind with 41%, the UK 38%, New Zealand 31% and then the United States.

The research comes at a right time, considering the NACAC position change in terms of adoption of commission-based agency recruitment almost three years ago, CEO of StudentMarketing, Samuel Vetrak told The PIE News.

Quite a few people are inquisitive about this topic, basically because either they either consider the pace of adoption too fast or too slow - and what better way to actually analyse the data and figure out the fact? Vetrak dubbed the research as extremely useful and a big contribution to the category.

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