The team of young journalists at Malaysia-based R.AGE are continuing their excellent investigation into education trafficking.
Their focus is on the practice of dodgy Bangladeshi education agents swindling students out of large amounts of money with false promises of study and work in Malaysia.
When the students arrive, they find that the college they enrolled in is a sham. With no money, they are forced to work illegally in ‘paid internships’, with the ‘college’ taking over half of their meager wages.
Working in Malaysia often means that the students are breaching Malaysia’s immigration laws. In some cases they are arrested and detained by the authorities, and their passports blacklisted so they can’t return.
There are over 30,000 Bangladeshi students studying in Malaysia, representing a third of Malaysia’s total international student population.
The R.AGE team has just released the third episode in an excellent video series on the issue of education trafficking. It includes undercover footage where R.AGE journalists pose as Bangladeshi students and meet with agents in Dhaka, who lie to them about conditions in Malaysia.
[video_player type=”youtube” style=”1″ dimensions=”560×315″ width=”560″ height=”315″ align=”center” margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”20″ ipad_color=”black”]aHR0cHM6Ly95b3V0dS5iZS9vNnB3dlphWXYtWT9saXN0PVBMYmV3RzlPV3FrRWtROVZaaUpacGRYc21tTm5jaWxCT2U=[/video_player]
How can students avoid getting scammed?
The best thing to do is take the advice from one of the victims in the video. She stresses the importance of international students doing their own research to confirm that they information they get is correct.
AgentBee aims to support better outcomes for international students with our suite of products that all focussed on ensuring professional and ethical conduct by education agents.
Liked this post? Please share it. 🙂