Regulation needed: Agents exploiting overseas students and making it rich, inquiry hears
The agents who recruit international students to Australia’s universities and colleges must be better regulated to prevent the financial exploitation of their clients, an inquiry into the sector has heard.
“The students are literally cash cows,” student advocate Bijay Sapkota, a former president of the Council of International Students Australia, said ahead of Tuesday’s first hearing in Melbourne of the federal parliamentary inquiry into international education.
Bijay Sapkota, a former international student and ex-president of the Council of International Students Australia, is now an advocate for students coming to study in Australia.CREDIT

ETER RAE
After two years of flat-lining numbers during the pandemic, international students are pouring back into Australia, fuelling an overseas education industry worth about $40 billion annually, trailing only iron ore, coal and natural gas as an export. The Bureau of Statistics said last week that almost 143,000 international students arrived in Australia in February – 93,270 more than in the same month last year.
But on Tuesday, federal MPs conducting an inquiry into international education voiced concerns that agents who facilitate the entry of overseas tertiary students were reaping massive profits, without ever having to reveal how much they were being paid by universities and colleges.