AIRC In The News

by Alan Dessoff

International competition for students is heating up world-wide, U.S. colleges and universities are expanding their outreach efforts and some are considering new and sometimes controversial methods.

To download and read the entire article, click here: http://www.nafsa.org/_/File/_/novdec09_recruiting.pdf

Excerpt on AIRC below:

....All that is changing now at Cincinnati and some other universities that have joined AIRC, which will hold its first annual conference December 4–5 in Coconut Grove, Florida. AIRC’s mission is to develop professional standards for international student recruitment and give a certification framework for private agencies that provide advising and application assistance to prospective students for U.S. accredited institutions. Many in the international higher education community are watching it with interest.

As Leventhal, its founding chair and president describes it, AIRC’s agent certification process, which will start officially early next year after a test run underway now with eight agencies, including IDP, will be functionally similar to the quality assurance process that universities go through to gain formal accreditation. “We have modeled this on what we learned about university accreditations,” he says. With intense due diligence, professional development and external site review, it will go “far beyond anything that has been done anywhere else in terms of qualifying agents.”

To download and read the entire article, click here: http://www.nafsa.org/_/File/_/novdec09_recruiting.pdf