Ajit left a village in southern India for Oxford, hoping for a better opportunity. However, within days of his arrival in 2022, he discovered a recruitment agent who discovered that the Course had sold him a “fake promise.”
The 27-year-old said a UK research agent in Tamil Nadu told him that Oxford Brooks is part of Oxford University and that automatic expansion of workplace visas after his research is guaranteed.
“They told me, I stayed for five years, then I can go directly to “Leave for an indefinite holiday.” This is a fake promise,” Ajit told the Financial Times.
The son of a policeman and a housewife, he worked long supermarket shifts along with his studies. Two years later, Ajit went back to his debt-filled home and earned a degree in digital marketing that had not yet been linked to work.
Cash-bound UK universities have relied heavily on international students in recent years, and their fees have not been curtailed. However, as higher education institutions compete in this profitable flow of overseas income, stories like AJIT have become more common, such as education and immigration experts.
The university uses recruitment agents to find international students in the course and pays millions of pounds a year.
Enroly, a platform used by international students to manage their enrolments, estimates that two-thirds of international students will enroll in UK universities through agents. Oxford University is one of the few institutions that do not use agents.
Experts say agents’ fees ranged from 10-30% per year tuition fee for recruits, but ranged from £60,000 a year depending on course and institution.
Occasionally, agents charge students a flat rate for help with university, accommodation, visa selection and application. There is little practical reliance for students who are misleading misleading information by intermediaries or encouraged by inappropriate courses, experts say.
“We have put in a higher committee-level arms race to convince students to choose a university over the best one for them,” said Vincenzo Raimo, International Higher Education Consultant.
Asked not to disclose his real name, Ajit said he applied to seven UK universities using Studyin, previously named Si-uk, and paid a small handling fee after securing an unconditional offer from Oxford Brooks. His tuition cost around £16,000 a year.
Founded in 2006, Studyin handled 210,000 UK University applications by foreign students from the year to March 2025. The consultants are headquartered in London, but have 100 offices in 45 countries.
Chief Executive Rob Grimshaw said: “All agents need to investigate the UK Council’s accreditation process and the code of conduct under investigation during onboarding. There’s nothing like a perfect system, but it’s working very hard to train staff and maintain a level of quality across the network.”
Grimshaw, former managing director of FT, filed a complaint, adding that there are “many routes” for staff to “quickly and openly engage.”
“We follow up on this incident incredibly vigorously because we don’t want to give students the wrong advice and guidance.”
Ajit’s story reflects broader concerns about the system of recruiting students through intermediaries. Last year, an independent government immigration advisor flagged the issue with agents giving “misleading information.”
The Immigration Advisory Committee called for forced disclosure of how much the university spends on agents and the number of students who register them each year.
Natasha Fernandez, an Indian tourism student at the University of Birmingham, said he met two agents who refused to help apply to certain UK universities and raised allegations of committee-led bias because “the benefits are greater than my profits in the entire transaction.”
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Fernandez said he suggested that the agent find a part-time job and “instantly” to start paying off a £14,400 loan for tuition and visa fees along with her course. Instead, the 27-year-old discovered that she needed to take a break from her studies and get a job, nearly double her degree length.
“You’re doing everything to achieve your goals.. But you can’t live up to those expectations,” she said.
Student arrivals in India have skyrocketed after the UK’s graduate route visas were reintroduced in July 2021. It quadrupled from 34,261 in 2019 to 139,539 in 2022, but during that period there was a decline in the number of people from China. Last year, the government enforced a ban on dependents and pushed numbers down.
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Tripti Maheshwari, co-founder of the Student Circus, said that she was helping international students find jobs and that certain Indian students had come to the UK despite not being suitable for the course.
“We were asked by our client to provide sessions in Hindi as the students are not very comfortable with English,” Maheshwari added. “People rent out their homes to get their students’ fees and get a visa. The university and the agent must work together to recruit students responsibly.”
“Some agents in South Asia sell not only education, but also the way to work and indefinite leave,” said Louise Nicole, a Malaysia-based international higher education expert and founder of the Asian Career Group.
“They promise them. You can settle down and live forever in the lush Kent. But that’s not the reality of what many international students can use.”
Vijaykumar Pydi, media director of the National Student Association of India in the UK, said that agents often tell Indian clients that the success rate for foreign graduates who get sponsored jobs is over 60%.
The UK agent market is unregulated and there is little monitoring of whether agents compensated students will succeed in the university. However, by summer, the agent’s names are expected to appear in students’ “acceptance confirmation” (the document required to apply for a visa) in a move aimed at increasing transparency.
The Higher Education Department introduced the Agent Quality Framework in 2023. This includes agent practice and online certification programs hosted by the UK Council.
“That code of practice codifies for the first time what standards and professional behavior are expected of agents,” said Charlie Robinson, university student mobility lead. She called it “a big step forward.”
But some are skeptical. “It provides a reliable façade without any actual checks or balance,” Nicole said. “The problem is, they don’t know what agents are telling students. I don’t think the university knows either.”
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Oxford Brooks University said, “We signed up for the UK Agent Quality Framework at launch and demonstrated our commitment to keeping agents to the highest possible standards.”
Students who are concerned about the agent’s actions should report to the university so that they can “exhaust-investigate.”
The Home Office evaluated international students for “important contributions” in the UK, saying “to implement measures to ensure that they, the institutions they attend, and the immigration system are protected from those who want to exploit it.”
