Education agents are organisations and/or individuals who provide a range of services in exchange for a fee from their service users,  including overseas higher education institutions and/or students who will study or are studying abroad (Nikula & Kivistö, 2018; Krasocki, 2002). As marketisation of higher education has intensified (Foskett, 2011), education agents have emerged in the international higher education sector, became essential to international student recruitment (BUILA, 2021), and appeared to play a significant role in international students’ decision-making process (University UK, 2017), which is however still under-researched in the literature to date (Feng & Horta, 2021). To better understand the role of education agents in the marketized higher education sector, this research explores Chinese international students’ experiences applying to postgraduate taught programmes in the UK from the students’ perspective. A longitudinal interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) approach is used, interviewing ten students at four stages throughout the application process from November 2020 to June 2021. Drawing on this dataset, this paper illustrates some Chinese postgraduate applicants’ thoughts around applications to overseas programmes and reflections on the value of their education agent over this procedure. In parallel, it also reveals that among the gamut of services that education agents provide, evaluating transcripts, selecting potential programmes and producing application documents are most valued by some Chinese postgraduate applicants, in which education agents are regarded as alternative labour, information navigator and insurance strategies. In addition, some important implications of the wide use of education agents for marketisation of international higher education are identified. We argue that marketisation has positioned education as a good that can be sold by universities, bought by international students, and promoted by education agents, which creates fierce positional competition for both agents and international students to gain access to prestigious international education and pushes them to adopt market-driven practices. On the other hand, universities are also in competition with one another, meaning information about their programmes are not always transparent, making individuals uncertain about their role within this market. Especially information associated with international application procedures and admission requirements for programmes overseas is less discussed in related research. We therefore call for close attention of policymakers, universities, researchers and other stakeholders to this particular issue. Where procedures and requirements rely on tacit knowledge, transparency and fairness may be called into question. 

This research adopted interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) as its methodological framework. IPA is a qualitative research approach that is committed to understanding personal life experiences, and the meaning of the experiences to individuals, and exploring how the individuals make sense of these experiences (Smith et al, 2017;Larkin & Thompson, 2012), wherein the ‘main currency’ of this approach is the meanings endowed to the particular experiences by the participants (Smith & Osborn, 2003). Precisely, IPA is inclined to give voice to each individual’s personal accounts, perceptions and interpretations (Larkin et al., 2006; Snelgrove, 2014), while at the same time the interpretative analysis developed by IPA researchers should be bound up with the participants’ accounts (Smith, 2017). Participants were recruited and interviewed by the primary researcher, who has personal experience both as student and education agent, lending an important commonality between researcher and participant. The criteria for participation are that the participant needs to be: 1. Chinese students who pursued their undergraduate programme in China or other countries and applied to postgraduate taught programme(s) commencing in September 2021; 2. Having used or using or considering using an agent (including any-scale agent or any business-model agent ) to apply to the programme(s) overseas. Given the need for commitment to longitudinal engagement, research aims and expectations were clarified with potential participants in the first contact. This ultimately generated the purposive sample of ten participants. The longitudinal in-depth semi-structured online interviews were conducted (Creswell, 2013). Based on the findings of an earlier study (Yang et al., 2021), interviews were timed to coincide with the four key stages of applications. The follow-up interview questions were unstructured and based on participants’ ongoing application process and were tailored to the individuals, in line with IPA principles. Four rounds of interviews were undertaken in Chinese and recorded, which took around 2 hours each. Interviews were conducted online due to Covid 19 restrictions in line with institutional ethics guidance to protect both participants and the primary researcher. While often seen as second-best to face-to-face interviews, in this study the long-term investment in rapport and use of familiar technology largely overcome these limitations.

To conclude, our findings have delineated some Chinese postgraduate applicants’ experiences with and reflections on their education agent. This contributes to addressing the literature gap around the impact of using education agents on international postgraduate applicants and the marketized higher education sector. Our research implies that marketisation has positioned education as a good that can be sold by universities, bought by international students, and promoted by education agents. The positional competition in the international higher education sector is intensified such that international students scramble for limited places in high-ranking universities abroad. Complex scenario in the international higher education market complicates applicants’ evaluation of the field, especially when given negative appraisals. In this sense, we argue that marketisation creates fierce positional competition for both agents and international students to gain access to prestigious international education and pushes them to adopt market-driven practices. Moreover, universities are also in competition with one another, meaning information about their programmes are not always transparent, making individuals uncertain about their role within this market. Particularly information associated with international application procedures and admission requirements for programmes overseas appears to be less discussed in related research. We therefore call for close attention of policymakers, universities, researchers and other stakeholders to this particular issue. Where procedures and requirements rely on tacit knowledge, transparency and fairness may be called into question. In such an uncertain and competitive context, education agents become valued as tools for understanding how prospective international students will be evaluated. At the same time, critical feedback and advice provided by education agents potentially allow applicants to be more competitive within the marketisation of international higher education.

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