Some private providers are offering exorbitant commissions to education agents in a frantic bid to lock in international students for 2024, fearing the impact of the Government’s looming enrolment caps in 2025, and frustrating the rest of the sector.
The Koala has seen the commissions on offer from ten different private providers, with most applying to the remainder of 2024, some to onshore transfers only, and some are ongoing.
. They offer:
- 100% commission on the course deposit
- 50% commission for transferring onshore students
- 30%, 40%, 45% commissions
- Per student bonuses ranging from $500 to $1000
- $2000 marketing incentive
- Enrolment fees passed on to agents
- $2000 ‘special bonus’
- $100 per term bonus for the full duration of the course
With 20 per cent as a reasonably standard commission in the private sector, this left The Koala wondering how these providers could possibly be making a profit, to which one source replied they would get a “bigger margin sitting out the front of the college busking with a guitar”.
There has been broad support across the sector for the non-caps parts of the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill 2024, particularly regarding improving the management of education agents, cross-ownership and commissions.
However, there is a growing sense of frustration that these parts of the Bill, that will genuinely target quality and integrity improvements, have been delayed due to the overwhelming opposition to the Government’s intention to impose international student enrolment limits.
Although there are some issues with the draft Bill, especially relating to the definition of an education agent, it is foreseeable that the Bill would have passed through Parliament already if enrolment caps had not been included.
In October 2023 (yes, almost 12 months ago), the Government announced that it would ban the payments of agent commissions for students transferring between providers onshore, a move that has been widely applauded by the sector. And when Minister for Education, Jason Clare, introduced the Bill into Parliament in May he announced that the Bill would allow for “complementary amendments to be made to the National Code of Practice for Providers of Education and Training to Overseas Students 2018 to ban commissions from being paid to education agents for onshore student transfers”.
The Bill also permits the publishing of “information about education agent commissions in connection with the recruitment of accepted students”. While there had been concerns that this may compromise commercial confidentiality, the levels of commissions seen above suggest that some providers just aren’t getting the message that this is not on.
Below are just some of the examples that The Koala has been sent (we have chosen not to publish provider names):
Example 1:
Example 2:
Example 3:
Example 4:
