Seven University of Wisconsin System campuses pay foreign agencies to help them recruit international students, sometimes spending more than $1,000 per student, according to a State Journal survey of the 13 four-year campuses and the System?s two-year colleges. The practice of paying commissions for each recruited international student is common yet controversial. It?s banned within the U.S. but largely unregulated abroad.
The State Journal found the use of commission-based agents varies widely across the System. Some campuses, such as UW-Madison and UW-Whitewater, don’t use them. It’s far more common for a regional university to use commission-based agents than a university with a well-established foreign presence such as UW-Madison, experts say.