The Ambassador of the Philippines to New Zealand recently took to Twitter to criticize the NZ Government  about international students being cheated and misled by dishonest education agents acting for NZ institutions.

I covered this in an earlier post.

In the meantime it’s been all quiet on the Twitter front until now.

 

Ambassador Domingo appears to be taking matters into his own hands.  He’s proposing an ambitious registration and review process that would be administered by the Philippine Embassy in NZ.

He should be congratulated for tackling the problem head on, and offering a solution, but it’s unclear how his proposed scheme would work in practice.

In the first place, unless I am missing something, the Philippines government (through the Ambassador) has no legal power to compel NZ based agents or institutions to do anything.

Maybe the scheme could be tied to the issue of international student visas in some way, but visas are issued by the NZ Government.

Second, even it if it possible to implement a registration and review scheme of the kind he proposes, how will it be administered?

Governments dedicate armies of bureaucrats to implementing and overseeing higher education quality control regimes.  Even then their effectiveness is often questionable.

I’m guessing that the Philippines embassy in NZ does not have a huge number of staff.  How will they have the manpower to register and review “all NZ PTEs, Schools and Immigration /Education Agents”?

Interesting Timing

The newly elected NZ Government has said publicly that it is considering imposing regulation on education agents.

Clearly it’s not happening fast enough for Ambassador Domingo who has come up with his own plan.

Will it work?

Only time will tell.

I have asked Ambassador Domingo for more information and will do an update if I hear back.

 

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