The Positive And Negative Effects Of Foreign Agencies For International Students

One of the most effective strategies in recruiting international students is using services of foreign agencies,which help promote universities in local market(Mazzarol,1998;Robison,2007;Pimpa,2003;Serra Hagedorn&Zhang,2010).This strategy has been a popular tool for many decades in developed countries and served well to their purposes of hiring international students and spreading western ideology.International education in China has its original history changing from time to time based on China's political ideology and economic development(Zhang,2005;Laihua Liuxuesheng Jiaoyu Xianzhuang,Wenti Ji Duice Yanjiu,2014).Thus it is important to study the current practice of universities in recruitment of foreign students through foreign agencies using Chinese national context and the context of bilateral relations.As a student-sending country Kazakhstan has been taken.The results of the interviews show that agencies can be an effective tool for Chinese universities while seeking more recruitment of students from Kazakhstan,and maybe from other countries.Agencies are active at promoting Chinese international education in the region and provide institutions with subsequent amount of students.Students recruited by agencies are mostly positive about their experiences of interaction with agencies and note that their basic expectations are met.However,such practice has no academic value and raises the risk of non-quality enrollment.In addition to that,some actions of consultation fraud and information manipulation have been discovered,which calls for government interference into this form of cooperation between universities and foreign agencies.The framework used by current research has been useful in exploring the question of adherence of the practice of recruitment through agencies to the policy and mission statements of international education of China.The researcher found that recruitment agencies are effective at meeting the demands for campus internationalization,strengthening people-to-people communication,and contribute to regional integration by creating and promoting positive image of China and Chinese education in Kazakhstan.At the same time,agencies might apply 'unfair' measures in order to promote their business,thus creating confusing understanding about Chinese education system.These and other findings call for a strong need to imply control measures and directives for Chinese institutions when dealing with foreign educational agencies.