Building productive relationships with international education agents

The purpose of this paper is to look at a particular university and investigate the role of education agents in the recruitment of international students to this institution. The study highlights limitations of agency theory, having reduced utility for appraising and describing education agent and university relations and looks at relationship marketing as a complimentary method of agent governance and relationship building for enhanced business performance. A case study approach was adopted for this pilot study, using a single case design with multiple embedded units of analysis. In-depth, one on one interviews were conducted with four industry experts from an educational institution. Additional information was sourced through the internet and from government reports. Data was analysed using Nvivo and manual qualitative data analysis techniques. This paper fulfils an identified research gap through investigating techniques that institutions could adopt to motivate and improve relationships with education agents. No previous studies have concentrated specifically on the recruitment of international students through this channel.