Agent Contracts and Accountability
The legal requirements of education institutions were discussed in A4.1 Legal Requirements of Education Providers. These legal requirements are often built into agents’ contracts.
Information Handling and Recruitment
Education institutions’ legal constraints regarding marketing will usually be built into contractual restrictions on the student counsellor’s handling of information and recruitment advice.
In most cases, the fundamental requirement is for the accuracy and integrity of the information supplied to prospective students. The student counsellor must supply truthful information about education institutions and their courses, enrolment and visa conditions, living conditions and options, and costs.
In many cases, contracts may specify that the student counsellor must use promotional material supplied by the education institution. Where agents develop promotional publications on behalf of the educational institution, the material must be accurate and not misleading.
Translation of promotional information is an area of particular concern. Translations, by their very nature, have the potential to be misleading. For example, translations could interpret vocabulary precisely, but still be misleading due to differences in grammatical usage and semantic connotations. Translations produced by educational institutions may be unwittingly deceptive or ambiguous as a result of false assumptions about the background knowledge of prospective students in their home country. Translations produced by agents may lack information that the educational institution is legally obliged to supply to students.
The student counsellor’s advice to prospective students is usually in their first language. Where this differs from the language of the destination country, the student counsellor must take particular care to accurately translate education institutions’ marketing and recruitment information.
When recruiting, the student counsellor must be sure that prospective students are fully informed before making a decision. In particular, he/she should be careful to avoid misleading by omission when advising prospective students. Advice and information supplied about educational institutions should be comprehensive and factual.
Note that in all of the above, it is essential for the student counsellor to be thoroughly familiar with the information supplied by the educational institutions.
Enrolment Preparation and Processing
The student counsellor usually has an obligation to assist prospective students in preparing their enrolment applications. In most cases, he/she needs to be aware of the correct document and money-handling processes.
Document Handling
Document handling can involve both enrolment application forms and student documents. The student counsellor should ensure that enrolment application forms are correctly completed. Most education institutions use their own enrolment application forms, so the student counsellor may need to be familiar with a variety of forms. The student counsellor should be able to:
- Advise students about the information needed for application forms
- Assist students in providing relevant information in the correct format
- Advise students about the supporting documents needed
- Check the relevance and authenticity of documents supplied by students
- Check the overall application is complete and accurate.
Document handling is discussed in B4.1 Dealing with Student Documents.
Money Handling
The student counsellor must make sure that any money paid by students is handled properly. Generally, any fees or other money he/she collects from students must be held securely and paid into the proper accounts.
Many education institutions are legally required to keep student money in special accounts, separate from the institution’s general accounts, and with restrictions and conditions on withdrawals. Their contracts with agents may specify similar restrictions on handling student money.
The student counsellor may need to be familiar with a variety of money-handling requirements for different educational institutions. Importantly, he/she must ensure that money is handled according to the particular processes of the institution enrolling a student.
Visa Preparation and Processing
Each destination country’s immigration laws usually have strict processes for student visa applications. The student counsellor needs to know these processes thoroughly in order to advise students and assist them in applying for student visas.
When preparing visa applications, the student counsellor must follow similar document and money-handling criteria as for enrolments. That is, he/she assists students to provide:
- Relevant and complete information in the correct format for visa application forms
- Relevant and authentic supporting documents.
The student counsellor must properly handle and account for any visa application fees paid by students.
Usually, student visa applications take some time to be processed by the destination country’s immigration authorities. The student counsellor needs to be aware of the time frames for visa processing, and assist students to lodge their visa applications on time. That is, he/she should ensure enough processing time between visa application and enrolment date.
Visa applications are discussed in A5.3 Enrolment and Visa Applications.
Extension Questions: For each relevant destination country:
- What contractual requirements are there between education institutions and agents?
- What are their features?
- How do they affect students?
- How do they affect the student counsellor?