Pipelines of schooling: Pathways to the United States and rent-seeking practices by education agents

Abstract

There is a tendency among researchers to overlook private-market transnational student exchanges outside of the formal education realm. Yet, such negligence undermines our ability to thoroughly study how international education was institutionalized. Based on 54 interviews with education agent industry members in Taiwan, this study contributes to the discussion by analyzing how education agents’ business practices enabled the commodification of admission procedures. Within this framework, education agents can be an example of "rent-seeking," a market intervention in which an entity seeks to gain wealth without any reciprocal contribution to productivity. A particular form of education agent business, the commission-based sponsored pathways (CBSP) model, can connect students’ education aspirations with business opportunities. Detailed examples from Taiwan’s education agents’ industry illustrate how the market mediates students' aspirations with industry-level organizational goals. In addition, this study points out that the emergence of the agent has created many new channels for international students to enter more selective schools with lower grades and affordable funding. I argue that the rent-seeking framework helps with theory-building and bridges future study of the economy, educational markets, and internationalization.