Recent financial disclosures from Australia’s public universities reported by The Australian have pulled back the curtain on the scale of education agent commission spending. The figures, drawn from the 2024 annual financial statements of Australia’s 38 publicly funded universities, reveal a sector that collectively spent more than $530 million in a single year on commissions paid to education agents to recruit international students.
What the numbers show
The University of New South Wales (UNSW) tops the disclosed figures, having paid $133.3 million in agent commissions in 2024. In return, international students – who made up 47 per cent of total enrolments – paid UNSW $1.4 billion in tuition fees.
The University of Sydney disclosed $71 million in agent fees for 2024, following $70 million the previous year. Foreign students account for nearly half of Sydney’s enrolments and contributed $1.6 billion in tuition revenue in 2024.
The commission payments disclosed by individual universities are set out below:
| University | Agent Commissions Paid (2024) |
| University of New South Wales | $133.3 million |
| University of Sydney | $71 million |
| Curtin University | $52.4 million |
| James Cook University | $39.4 million |
| Deakin University | $30.6 million |
| Queensland University of Technology (QUT) | $24.6 million |
| La Trobe University | $11 million |
These figures represent only a partial picture. The actual total across the sector is likely considerably higher, as several of the universities with the largest international student cohorts declined to disclose their commission payments.
The cone of silence
Three of the universities that generate the most revenue from international students have not disclosed their agent commission figures. Monash University described its payments as “commercial in confidence”, although its 2024 financial statements show $73 million in “student-related” costs. The University of Melbourne, where 43 per cent of students come from overseas, and the University of Queensland, where the figure is 39 per cent, similarly declined to reveal what they pay agents.
Commission rates and the dropout problem
Australian universities typically pay agents between 11 and 17 per cent of first-year tuition fees to recruit a student from overseas, with the majority of students coming from India or China. On top of the commission payments, universities collectively spent a further $412 million on advertising and marketing in 2024.
Some of the commission figures sit uneasily alongside institutional performance data. QUT paid $24.6 million in agent fees in 2024, even as nearly half of the foreign students recruited dropped out during their first year.
A push for transparency — with limits
Starting this year, the Department of Education has new powers to compel universities to disclose how much they pay to individual agents and how many students are recruited as a result. The department has framed the change in terms of sector integrity:
“Greater transparency around education agent commissions will support stronger integrity in the sector. This change will help providers choose ethical, high-quality education agents to work with. It will also increase transparency of education agent activities, provider and education agent relationships, and help weed out unscrupulous and poor performing agents from the sector.”
There is, however, a significant caveat: the information collected will not be made public.
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Source: The Australian (Natasha Bita)