More than 80 per cent of overseas education advisers in Hong Kong are agents for foreign schools, Consumer Council says
Findings raise questions over the impartiality of the sector
More than 80 per cent of Hong Kong consultants offering advice on overseas education are directly representing foreign institutions and receive commissions from them for enrolling students, the city’s consumer watchdog said on Wednesday.
The Consumer Council said these agents received 10 to 15 per cent of their customers’ first-year tuition fee from the institutions they represented. Based on the fees charged by a UK university, this commission could be about HK$20,000.
Yet despite the reward awaiting them, some agents refused to help students with issues such as visa applications, the council said.
“As long as they have some form of reward from overseas education institutions, they may not be working in the best interest of students when they recommend programmes, courses or schools to the students,” the council’s chief executive Gilly Wong Fung-han said.
The findings came after the council last year surveyed 29 agents, with 25 confirming they were retained to recruit students for specific schools.
Wong said it would be hard to quantify the impact of the agents’ actions, but claimed it would be significant.
