Students double up as agents to fill college seats

COIMBATORE: With the admission season on, managements of self-financing city colleges have come upon a novel way to fill seats. They have been deploying existing students as agents to lure aspirants to join, despite the huge fees and donations. In return, the student agent gets paid a percentage of the profits.
Considering the huge rewards, many students have become agents, roaming their native towns scouting for people who have the money and wish to pursue their degree in Coimbatore.The rates are fixed for arts and science, management and engineering courses and commission also varies based on the course chosen. While senior academicians despise this practice, those at the helm of institutions say that such tactics are necessary in these times of growing competition.
Apart from the top few colleges, most educational institutions rely on these tactics to fill their seats. In fact, many of the private managements say it is good business sense to deploy students as agents. "Although agents have the capability of bringing in thousands of students, he/she does not necessarily work only for one college," says the owner of a college on the outskirts of a city. This is one reason why we prefer to use students as agents, he added.
"When a student recommends the same institution he is studying in, people tend to take his advice seriously. Another big advantage is that student agents rarely speak ill about their institution. They cannot, because promoting it has become their business," he said.
Colleges sometimes work together in fixing rates for specific courses. For arts and science colleges, an admission can bring anywhere between Rs 3,000 and Rs 10,000. This can increase to around Rs 15,000 for an MBA admission. The engineering seats bring in more money, rangeing from Rs 10,000 to Rs 50,000. The highest is for medical seats which could fetch Rs1lakh and even higher.
"Students generally enter into an agreement with the college to bring in a specific number of students for an agreed upon percentage of profits. Most often, these agents are able to bring in a lot more students and thus earn a substantial amount of money," says a student agent who passed out of a private college last year. Students make contacts with taxi and auto drivers who also get paid a commission for introducing a new client. While some colleges pay for bringing in students, others pay even for contacts. Colleges follow up on these contacts and if it translates to an admission, the agent is paid his commission.
Bharathiar University Vice-Chancellor G James Pitchai said that they were not aware of such practices. "It is an unfortunate if such things are happening. It is illegal and immoral to use agents and students like this," he said.
"This has been happening for a very long time. This is quite unfortunate but it does exist," remarks C Pichandy the General Secretary of the Association of University Teachers (AUT).
"This is just one of the many problems in the higher education sector. Having said this, using students to get admissions is a despicable practise," says K Karunakaran the former Vice-Chancellor of Anna University, Coimbatore.