BOSTON (AP) — Federal officials and the Boston Public Schools have reached an agreement over allegations that the school district violated federal law by not providing English instruction to students with a limited grasp of the language, the U.S. Justice Department announced Friday. Under the agreement, Boston Public Schools agreed to assess the English proficiency of an estimated 7,000 students who were not previously tested in how well they understand, speak, read and write English. The district also agreed to provide the students with extra English language help during other classes including math, social studies and science. In addition, the Boston Public Schools must monitor the academic performance of current and former English language learners and provide English language learner services at all schools. The Boston Globe , citing documents obtained under a public records request, reported in July that the federal scrutiny began after Boston schools revealed during a routine state review that 42% of the district’s nearly 11,000 English language learners were not receiving the legally required help. In a statement Friday, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and the federal Department of Education ‘s Office for Civil Rights said that since 2003, Boston Public Schools had failed to properly identify and adequately serve thousands of English language learners under federal law. Officials said the settlement came after federal authorities examined the district’s policies and visited schools. “All students who are not proficient in English are entitled to language acquisition services to overcome language barriers that impede their equal and meaningful participation in educational programs,” said Thomas Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. For months now, Boston schools have made changes in anticipation of settlement agreement. “This agreement outlines the work that is already underway in Boston for students learning English,” Boston Public Schools Superintendent Carol Johnson said in a statement Friday. “Within the last two years we have made significant investments for ELL students and their families that will ensure they are receiving a quality education in any school they choose in Boston.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

PHILADELPHIA — Duong Nghe Ly can’t wait to begin his senior year at South Philadelphia High School. A day of violence there last year changed his life, and he wants to learn if his school has been transformed as well. Last Dec. 3, after years of attacks on Asian immigrant students, something finally snapped. Fueled by rumors, a group of students roamed the halls searching for Asian victims until one was attacked in a classroom. Later, about 70 students stormed the cafeteria, where several Asians were beaten. About 35 students pushed past a police officer onto the so-called “Asian floor,” but were turned back. After school, Asians being escorted home were attacked anyway by a mob of youths. Almost all the attackers were black — but few observers believe the violence was due to racial hatred. Instead, they cite isolation of different groups within the school, certain students’ warped “gangster” values, and for some, simmering resentments over perceived benefits for Asian students. About 30 Asians were injured that day; seven went to hospitals. Past attacks had been reported to administrators and police, but students say nothing seemed to change. Ly (pronounced LEE) was in the lunchroom for what he calls “the riot.” Days later, he was followed home from school and punched in the face on his front stoop. He had arrived from Vietnam two years earlier, speaking nearly no English, the son of poor, uneducated parents. He thought America would be like the Hannah Montana TV episodes he had watched in Vietnam. What he found was closer to The Wire . So he kept his head down, sought silent refuge among his countrymen and tried to make his way through the broken system. Dec. 3 was a turning point. He realized the system must change — and that he and his fellow immigrants were the ones to make that happen. Their method? Guided by local activists, and despite reservations from some parents, about 50 Asian students boycotted school for a week. “Before, I was timid. I didn’t really want to get myself into trouble,” says Ly, 18. Then he realized, “If everybody’s silent, nobody speaks up, the problem keeps going on without being resolved. I feel like I or my friends have to speak up and organize to tell people this is not right. “We had to fight for it.” ‘Just suffer it’ Duong Ly’s parents, ethnic Chinese who grew up in Vietnam, worked 27 years to grasp the bottom rung of the ladder to American success. His mother, Phung Mac, attended school through the second grade, when her family ran out of money to pay for more. His father, Tu Ly, made it through the sixth grade. In 1981, they submitted their first paperwork to immigrate to the United States. “You had to have a certain background to go to school, be in the Communist Party,” Tu Ly says in Cantonese as his son translates. “Your grandparents had to be a party member for you to get into good schools. Otherwise it cost a lot of money to get an education.” Ly’s parents lived in Ho Chi Minh City, eking out a living selling “pho” noodle soup, rising at 5 a.m. and working in their shop until 9 or 10 at night. All extra money went toward school for Duong (pronounced YUHNG) and his older brother, and fees for immigration paperwork. At times they could not pay their rent and were forced to move, but they always made sure their boys stayed in school. Ly’s mother developed painful hip problems. Her younger brother, who had already moved to America, sent money to pay for an operation. It was unsuccessful — the doctor said it was “an experiment. If you want a better … operation, you need to pay more money,” she says in Cantonese. In 2008, after spending about $20,000 on immigration fees, the family was approved and came to Philadelphia. “We finally achieved our wish: freedom,” Tu Ly says. “We finally had a chance for a better education.” South Philadelphia High looms over an entire city block in a poor section of South Philadelphia long populated by descendants of voyagers from Italy, other European nations and the black American South. Asians and Latinos are now coming in greater numbers. Today, the school is about 70% black and 18% Asian. During Duong Ly’s first year, there were 45 reports of “dangerous incidents” such as weapons possession or assaults at the school of about 1,000 students, enough to earn a “persistently dangerous” label from the state. There also were 326 reports of lesser crimes such as fighting, threats or robberies. The graduation rate was 48%. Only 16% of students were proficient or better in reading and 8% in math, according to state test results. Within weeks of starting school, Ly was robbed in the bathroom. His older brother was punched in the face. “Our friends told us, ‘Just suffer it,’” Ly says. They didn’t report either incident. ‘Discrimination happens’ Duong Ly speaks dispassionately, expressing no racial animosity, when asked to explain how fellow students could commit such vicious attacks. “Because they live in a violent environment,” he suggests. “Maybe their parents have problems and troubles, so they want to express their anger by violence.” His father also declines to condemn the attackers. “In Vietnam,” he says, “the original Vietnamese people don’t like us because we are a different ethnicity. People from the countryside who move to the city get discrimination from city people. It’s the same here. They don’t have an understanding about who we are. Discrimination happens in every society.” About a dozen black students were suspended or expelled after Dec. 3. Their names have been kept secret, and they have not commented publicly. Some other black students show little sympathy for them. “They’re just hating on other races. They don’t have anything better to do with their lives,” says Tyreke Williams, who graduated last June. Wali Smith makes no excuses for the attacks, but understands where they come from. A community specialist who holds workshops on anger management and conflict resolution in various schools, he witnessed the Dec. 3 violence. The South Philly native says blacks have always felt marginalized in the neighborhood dominated by Italians and Irish. Now, some students feel an almost unconscious resentment when they see their Asian counterparts studying on their special second-floor sanctuary, which was established to provide language programs and provide a more welcoming environment. “Those (black) kids feel the majority of the staff there does not care about their education,” Smith says. “They see these Asian kids come in and be nurtured, and they want that same kind of comfort.” Then there is a small group of troublemakers with a value system that says, “it’s cool to be gangster,” Smith says. “But really you’re afraid, a scared coward. So you take advantage of weak people.” “It’s not based on race, it’s based on opportunity,” Smith said of the history of violence against Asians. “If they go to the bathroom and take your money, and you don’t report it, they’ll just keep riding it until the wheels fall off.” School, community and beyond The Asian students and activists reserve almost all of their criticism for administrators and the school district, which they say consistently failed to protect students. A school district spokesman did not return a call for comment. Administrators have insisted that they responded to Asian students’ complaints and tried their best to combat violence that has become part of the culture for some Philadelphia youths. “These problems are long-standing and go beyond the school and into the community,” district superintendent Arlene Ackerman said a week after the attacks. A report by a retired judge, which was commissioned by the district, said there were confrontations between a small group of black and Asian students on Dec. 2 that led to the widespread Dec. 3 attacks on random Asians. The report was criticized by Asians who say it failed to account for years of documented violence and that investigators did not interview many student victims and witnesses. Yet Duong Ly is still enthusiastic about his school. He says the English as a Second Language program is good, the teachers care, there are plenty of computers with Internet access — and it’s all free. “If I study hard I will get a lot of opportunities, scholarships, grants…,” he says. “It’s rewarding to work hard and study hard here, more than in Vietnam. I can go to a better school, go to college, get a career, then I can take care of my parents. So I like it more here.” He also likes his new home, a narrow, two-story row house bought from his uncle. They are the only Asians on the block. The front door opens into the living room, where the family’s bicycles (they have no car) share space with an old, fat television, couches and a folding table for meals. On the far wall is a handsome curio cabinet of polished wood, ornately carved, holding photographs of ancestors. Tu Ly works as a cook in an Asian supermarket. His wife is unemployed. The family has permanent resident status and expects to become naturalized citizens within a few years. Recently, Medicaid paid for a hip replacement for Duong’s mother. “We owe this country a lot,” Tu Ly says. “The government paid a lot of money for my wife’s operation. We will work our best to contribute to society. My children can choose whatever job they like, as long as they do something to contribute to this country.” New initiatives The boycott was not an easy step to take. Some students were afraid of being expelled. Many parents were against it, fearing their children would become even more conspicuous targets. Some said local activists were making the situation worse. Once it started, though, attitudes changed. “After the boycott, I felt much more confident and powerful because our voices were heard by the people,” Duong Ly says. The district installed 126 security cameras. A “50-50 club” took Asian and black students on group outings. More bilingual staffers and diversity training were added. Principal LaGreta Brown was forced out on the eve of a faculty no-confidence vote after a local newspaper discovered her certification had lapsed. All eyes are on the incoming principal. Otis Hackney III is 37, a black Philadelphia native, fresh from two years as principal of a mostly white suburban high school. He got the call from Philly one night when he was standing on the sidelines of his school stadium, watching a lacrosse game under the lights. “My first thought was, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Hackney says during an interview in his new office, the cinderblock walls bare except for a picture of the singing legend Marian Anderson , class of 1921. Soon, though, Hackney accepted the challenge. His immediate agenda includes building a relationship with the Asian community and creating a group of school stakeholders who meet regularly to set goals. Hackney says all students should feel comfortable approaching him: “I want to listen more than I speak. Students are often much more honest than adults.” He bought a new conference table and spiffed up a room for community meetings: “The message is, this is an important place where we talk about important things.” He’s getting Asians out of their special floor and into the rest of the building. He’s looking at United Nations-style translation headphones for immigrant parents. He is the fifth principal in six years, and he wants to stick around. There is much to heal. The Vietnamese embassy has complained to the U.S. State Department. The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund filed a complaint with the Justice Department, which on August 27 found merit in the claims and advised the district to settle the matter. An investigation by the state Human Rights Commission is pending. The dynamic that exploded on Dec. 3 has not disappeared. “If you’re that angry and frustrated about something that your behavior manifests itself that way, what are we not addressing as a school, as a community?” asks Hackney. “As African-Americans, we can’t forget our own struggle to the point that we become what we fought so hard against.” “That’s one side. The other side is, when you have an immigrant population that comes in, what are the skill sets they need to function in this society? It can be very difficult for that child and that family to function in schools. So how do you put all that together? That’s my job. “Part of it is getting people to see the human side in every person, identifying with their struggle. Once people begin to do that, you realize folks aren’t as privileged as you think they are. They don’t speak the language. They don’t have that many advantages over you. You’re just not taking advantage of the ones you have.” Hope ahead? Duong Ly had a busy summer: An internship at the University of Pennsylvania on Asian health issues; a psychology class at a community college; trips to conferences in Houston and Boston to discuss his new activism; being photographed for a Philadelphia magazine story that labeled the boycotters “heroes.” In between, he spent a little time working on his college essays and a lot of time on Facebook . On Wednesday, he will walk through the battered metal doors of South Philadelphia High to start his senior year at what he hopes is a changed school. “I’m really looking forward to it,” he says. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

NEW YORK — For their first fire drill, students at the Refugee Youth Summer Academy trooped out of the building behind their teachers. All that was missing were the sirens. The blaring alarms had been muted, for fear they could trigger terror in children who recently arrived from war zones and other conflict areas. The silent fire drill was part of the balancing act for staff at the six-week program that helps youngsters who have survived wars and refugee camps prepare for a new experience — American public school. For some of the kids, formal education has been haphazard or nonexistent, said Elizabeth Demchak, principal of the school, run by the International Rescue Committee , which works with refugees and asylum-seekers. For others, school consisted of sitting and taking notes surrounded by dozens of others with a teacher reciting a lecture. Preparing them means helping them learn how to go to school along with what they learn there. “When they enter the classroom in September, things won’t be so new for them, and having taken away that freshness, that newness, you’re also taking away that fear,” Demchak said. That’s where something like the fire drill comes in. Running a drill, explaining what it is, can help keep students from reacting negatively when they experience it in school. “If a child has lived in an environment, especially in a conflict area, where they’re accustomed to hearing sirens and sirens are a signal for an emergency … when they hear an alarm going off in their school it may trigger a certain memory, it may make them act in a certain way,” Demchak said. “We’re teaching them how to disassociate certain triggers that had a negative connotation with things that are here to help and protect them,” she said. The Youth Academy program has about 120 kids this summer who will be in kindergarten to 12th grade this school year. The students’ homelands are a litany of the world’s hot spots, combat zones and conflict areas: Iraq. Afghanistan. Sierra Leone. Burma. Most have been here for less than 18 months. Some will be starting school in America for the first time. In the program, the children work on their English, writing and math. They take art, dance and music. They go on field trips. From the length of the day to changing rooms between classes to raising their hands and interacting with teachers, the program tries to mimic what students will experience. That was a blessing for Helen Samuels, 17, who attended two years ago and works there this summer. Half Burmese and half Thai, she hadn’t been in school for two years when she arrived here in June 2008 from the refugee camps along the Burma-Thailand border. She was a frightened girl and the program helped reassure her. “We had to learn all the basics of how to be a student, starting from you had to come to class on time,” Samuels said. “It helped me, to prepare me to see school is not something scary.” Among those starting this fall is Basserou Kaba, a 16-year-old from Ivory Coast, an African nation divided between government and rebel forces. The teen, who was in 12th grade before coming here in April, will start in 10th grade to improve his English. He is happy that U.S. teachers expect students to ask questions, unlike those in his homeland. “In my country, the teacher teach what he wants,” Kaba said. “You don’t understand, it’s your problem.” Kaba admits he’s a little nervous about his language skills but says he’s now comfortable with the idea of going to school. “In this program, I came to know what is the school in U.S.,” he said. The IRC program and others like it can play a vital role in helping them build their lives in a new country, said Michele Pistone, a law professor at Villanova University School of Law who specializes in refugee issues. New arrivals can benefit from being taught such common practices for Americans, she said, as parental involvement in a child’s education. “In the United States, our system, there’s much more interaction between parents and teachers than there is elsewhere around the world,” Pistone said. “A lot of the refugees I’ve worked with — because they’re coming from an environment where there isn’t that expectation of involvement — they tend not to be.” The IRC program, which ends Friday, holds parent-teacher conferences and encourages parents to get involved. One who did is Bushra Naji, 53, who was a teacher in Iraq for 25 years before leaving for Syria in 2006 and the United States in 2008. Now she volunteers, helping students in kindergarten through second grade. In Iraq, she said, she taught English by writing on a blackboard and having her students repeat after her. Here, she said, her eyes shining and her smile bright, it’s “very exciting” to see the teachers interact with the children. “I wanted to be younger,” she said, “to be teacher here.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Two years ago, hiring overseas agencies — paid by the college in the form of per-student commissions — to recruit international students was taboo. Few colleges would publicly admit to the practice, which is illegal under U.S. law when it comes to recruiting American students. Today, while ethical qualms persist, and the debate over the payment of per-student commissions still simmers, more colleges have embraced the recruitment strategy — and more still are willing to consider it. “It’s a moving landscape,” says Susan Sutton, associate vice chancellor of international affairs at Indiana University Purdue-University Indianapolis (IUPUI) and associate vice president for international affairs for the Indiana University system. “Two years ago, I would have said, categorically, IUPUI and IU, as a system, do not use agents and will not use agents. End of discussion.” Now, she’s on a system-wide task force to evaluate the use of agents. “We don’t use them at this moment and are unlikely to do so in the next couple of years, but the door has been cracked open. Let me put it that way,” says Sutton. What’s changed? There’s been a recession, for one thing. And college leaders that in more flush times embarked on grand plans to internationalize their campuses have been looking for cost-effective strategies for increasing and diversifying their international student enrollments. These international students are typically full-paying. But international recruiting can be an expensive proposition with little guarantee on return; this being the case, the prospect of paying an outside company a portion of a student’s tuition revenue only after he or she has matriculated has proven an attractive model. RECRUITERS: U.S. colleges find growing market overseas, in Vietnam ON THE WEB: Shifts in grad school enrollment INSIDE HIGHER ED: ‘The Chinese are coming’ “Colleges and universities, a lot of them, are just hungry to internationalize themselves,” says Richard W. Ferrin, president and CEO of World Education Group, an agency and education services company that recruits international students (including with agents) and forges articulation agreements between its partner U.S. colleges and foreign universities. “This is for a variety of reasons, sometimes financial – we want these full-paying international students to help with our budget flows – and even with the best of educational aims, we want a more diverse student body. We’re at a time when U.S. higher education is saying we want to internationalize for educational, financial, social, and political reasons, and most don’t have the budgets to send out representatives from their institutions to go all over the world,” says Ferrin, formerly the president of Salem International University. Seeing the opportunity, big, well-regarded international education companies – including Hobsons and IDP Education – have stepped into the marketplace, and are developing networks of agents to recruit students for U.S. colleges. Another change, and arguably the most significant one, is that a young nonprofit association, the American International Recruitment Council, which formed in 2008, has quickly established itself as a player and has offered a degree of quality assurance to the marketplace. With aims to regulate and professionalize the industry, AIRC certifies agencies that meet its standards. Just last week, AIRC announced the certification of 16 more agencies, bringing the total number of certified agencies to 24, operating in 35 countries. (One agency was denied certification. Per its policy, AIRC declined to disclose this agent’s identity.) “Now there is a large group of certified agents. They have been validated, if you will, they have been vetted,” says Marguerite J. Dennis, vice president for enrollment and international programs at Suffolk University, in Massachusetts . “Now it’s up to us, those of us who are involved in international education, to determine if we want to use them.” “I think this is a tremendous opportunity for the United States,” says Dennis. “Forget my school. Forget any individual school. We have been at a distinct disadvantage for years.” The use of international recruiting agents is common practice for colleges in Australia and Britain , but U.S. universities have reasons they’ve resisted it. For one, federal law restricts incentive compensation when it comes to recruiting domestic students; the 1992 law emerged out of concerns that recruiters would bring in unqualified students in order to collect commissions. While there are no such legal restrictions when it comes to international student recruitment, many have been skeptical of applying different standards offshore. Beyond general questions about the wisdom of commission-based recruiting – there are fears that agents will pass along students who lack the ability to succeed or otherwise would be poor matches for the institution — there’s also a general concern that agents acting on behalf of a college could engage in abusive or unethical practices or misrepresent the institution, undermining its global brand. “We still have lots of reservations about whether we need to do it and whether that would result in students who really should be coming to Indiana as opposed to being cajoled into it,” says Sutton, of IUPUI. “The concerns are that some agents – bad agents, let’s call them bad agents – would gouge the prospective students, and by gouging I mean overcharge them for what they’re doing and act in ways we view as unethical. There are concerns that bad agents would not understand Indiana, and would misrepresent what we are, and therefore that it could tarnish the university name.” On the other hand, “the appeal is this: that no university can be everywhere at once,” says Jim Plunkett , executive director of admissions at La Salle University, in Philadelphia, another institution that does not currently work with agents but is considering it. “The lure of using the international agent — the right one — is that you already have an advocate for your university embedded in that country, someone who knows the culture, someone who knows the language, someone who knows the education system.” The rise of the agent model The ability to distinguish the good agents from the bad is the premise of a standards-setting organization like AIRC, which certifies agencies that have successfully completed a process akin to accreditation, complete with self-study and site visit. “This was the missing link,” says John Deupree, AIRC’s executive director. “Before there was no standards process or quality assurance process. In our view, the biggest barrier to the use of agents has been removed.” AIRC’s number of member colleges climbed past 100 this month. Its members are predominantly small, tuition-dependent private colleges and regional public universities, with a few larger research universities and community colleges thrown in. The most elite colleges are not represented. Many larger, more well-known institutions, both public and private, can recruit effectively on their own. They can invest funds to send their own admissions officers to Beijing or Bangalore, and spend enough time there to build contacts with high schools and prospective students. While not every college will use agents, “the receptivity has grown startlingly fast” – including from the corporate world, says Mitch Leventhal, AIRC’s chair and president, and vice chancellor for global affairs for the State University of New York system. “I have seen a very significant increase in interest from private companies in a variety of fields, as well as private equity firms, that are either looking for places to invest their money or looking to tap into what they see as a potentially large new industry in U.S. higher education, that is, the recruitment space.” “I’ve been visited by at least eight companies, either in private equity or related fields, who have come specifically because they’ve observed the heating up of this market and are trying to figure out if they can serve it in some way. That’s a really significant change that’s happened in the last 12 months,” says Leventhal. He adds: “It’s early, it’s changing quickly, and there’s opportunity. Truthfully, in five years there will probably be some major players who have established themselves, and they may not be companies that exist yet or that we even know are going to be in that spot.” Two companies that are vying to be in that spot are IDP and Hobsons, Australian and British companies, respectively. IDP, which is AIRC-certified, has moved most quickly in building a portfolio of universities, and now has agreements to recruit students for 60 colleges in the United States – including, to take a sampling, Bellarmine University , in Kentucky; Colorado State University; Dean College, in Massachusetts; Duquesne University, in Pennsylvania; Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, in Florida; Guilford College, in North Carolina; John Carroll University, in Ohio; the Johns Hopkins University Global MBA Program; Lipscomb University, in Tennessee; Lyon College, in Arkansas; Mary Baldwin College, in Virginia; Thomas College, in Maine; and the Universities of Hartford, North Dakota and San Diego. One year into IDP’s efforts on this front, “the U.S. school perception of what we do is a lot more open-minded than I was expecting it,” says Mark Shay, the company’s regional director for the United States. “That’s been tremendously encouraging.” Also one year in, Hobsons, which is an applicant for AIRC certification, has signed up 27 U.S. universities as partners, and, at the upcoming NAFSA: Association of International Educators conference (which begins today), it plans to start signing up the next 25 or so (Hobsons, unlike IDP, has not released its list of clients). “We’re being cautious because we want to make sure we get this right,” says Jeremy Cooper, president of Hobsons Integrated Marketing Solutions. “We feel as though we’ve had some key successes this year. For us, it’s just about continuing the pace.” Hobsons’ ultimate goal is to build a broad-based, representative portfolio of 150 to 200 U.S. universities that its network of agents can refer students to; IDP, in five years, hopes to represent 500 U.S. colleges. The partner colleges will pay a flat fee, in IDP’s case, and a proportion of tuition, in Hobsons’ case, after the students are settled on campus (after the first add/drop date for IDP, and the final withdrawal date, for Hobsons). The results for colleges that have contracted with these companies, in terms of increased or diversified international student enrollments, are still to be determined; stay tuned until fall 2011. Many institutions, however, have high aspirations for growth, and see the use of agents as a key component of their growth strategy. Using agents, Leventhal would like to grow the international enrollment of the 64 SUNY campuses from the current figure, 18,164, about 3.9% of the 465,000 students enrolled, to 31,500, which, assuming current enrollment levels, would represent an increase of the proportion of foreign students to 6.8%. The University of Mississippi, which has contracted with IDP, has goals of increasing its international enrollment, currently at 3%, to 4 to 5%, over a growing student body, says Greet Provoost, director of the office of international programs. “We’re very growth-driven,” she says. Provoost adds, however, that the growth in international enrollment is two-pronged. “Number one, yes, it is increasing the brand recognition of the university, which has a lot to do with marketing and putting out tentacles that are working on your behalf, like IDP for example. But I also see it very much as a result of an effort to do what we do internally better as well, to be able to enroll more of the students who apply and who are admitted.” Reservations about the agent model Ethical questions regarding the use of agents, however, are by no means settled. “There is no question that we are seeing more corporate entanglements when it comes to recruitment of international students,” says Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. “We certainly have no objection in the abstract to arrangements that may involve a profit motive. Certainly the bookstore has been outsourced to profit-making companies and the cafeteria has been. But we have misgivings when it comes to what we view as a fairly core component of the university mission. I think that’s the real crux of our objection and concern, is that unlike the cafeteria, unlike the bookstore, this has to do with one of the most fundamental academic functions of the university. Outsourcing this or subjecting this to the profit motive may well be crossing a threshold we don’t want to cross.” Nassirian cites what’s happened in Australia by way of warning. While Australia is often described as a huge success story when it comes to cross-border higher education – having increased its international enrollment from 228,119 students in 2002 to 491,565 students in 2009 – its system has been strained by the rapid growth. A recent review of the international education sector was spurred partly by collapses of shaky for-profit vocational colleges and investigated a range of complaints involving unscrupulous providers offering low-quality education programs and false and misleading information provided by education agents. As regards to agents, a government report published in February, demonstrates the possibility for abuse when colleges are not conscientious: “During the review some [higher education] providers indicated monitoring their offshore education agents’ activities was difficult and there were suggestions the Australian Government should directly regulate the activities of their education agents. Other providers indicated a disturbing abrogation of their responsibilities, a lack of good business sense or a thorough understanding of the complexities of operating an export business…. It is most concerning to hear that some providers do not believe their education agents are accurately representing them and yet they are taking no action to either cease using such agents or ensure their education agents act in an ethical manner.” On the one hand, says Leventhal, of AIRC, Australia, long a leader in international recruitment, may now have a lesson to learn from the United States – rather than attempt to regulate overseas recruitment agencies through legal measures, the country could turn to a voluntary system of accreditation or certification (per AIRC’s model). On the other hand, says Nassirian, of AACRAO, perhaps the United States still has lessons to learn from Australia’s growth pains: “We may kill the goose that laid the golden egg. American higher education enjoys the highest prestige in the world in terms of desirability mostly because American institutions have been so meticulous in their approach to international students.” The other national association representing admissions professionals, the National Association for College Admission Counseling, includes a blanket prohibition in its standards of good practice against commission-based recruiting; it makes no distinction between domestic and international recruitment. This has long been the case. That said, the association’s admissions practices committee is now considering the issue, with the intention of clarifying its stance specific to the payment of commissions in international student recruiting, says David Hawkins, NACAC’s director of public policy and research. “There needs to be some clarity as to NACAC’s position one way or the other,” he says. Marjorie S. Smith, associate dean and director of international student admission at the University of Denver, remains an interested skeptic; she still has a lot of questions about the use of agents. “This may be naivet? on my part, but I don’t see why we would pay an outside agent to find students for us overseas, when we don’t pay outside agents to find American students,” she says. “To me, there’s no mystery to recruiting international students. It’s not like these companies know how to do what we don’t. It takes a professional staff, just as it does for domestic recruitment, and just as you do for domestic recruitment, you need to know the market, you have to get to know the counselors and you have to make yourself available to students.” Whereas, she says, “When you pay [an outside agent] to enroll a student, you lose some control and you run the risk of misrepresentation. You could get slimed.” “I’m going to watch the growth of AIRC, and their efforts to control the potential negative aspects, and applaud for them and root for them as loudly as possible,” Smith says. “But in the meantime, we’re going to make our investment more directly through scholarships and recruitment travel and social media, and our ever increasing Web presence, and we’ll also continue to work with the dozens of agents that we do – but these are agents who work for the family and not for us.” Much of the recent rhetoric about the use of agents, paid by the college via commission, suggests that those institutions that don’t jump on board the bandwagon will be left behind. But as several professionals point out, institutions don’t have to use agents. At American University, “it’s not our policy to do so but there’s also no need,” says Evelyn Levinson, American’s director of international admissions and chair of NAFSA’s Knowledge Community on Recruitment, Admissions and Preparation (she stresses that she is stating her personal views and is not speaking on behalf of either American or the NAFSA group). “We’re doing a great job on our own.” “From experience, I can say that universities can do really well by using internal expertise,” adds Negar Davis, director of global relations and promotion at Pennsylvania State University , another institution that does not use agents. “They can still be successful and still attract quality students to their campus, who truly understand what they’re coming into.”