A story in a Vietnamese newspaper on 3 January was headed: Vietnam draws up rules for foreign education agents as students flock overseas
Unfortunately the story is short on detail, but the main grabs are:
- “The Vietnamese government is drafting regulations to recognize foreign organizations that provide educational services for students seeking degrees abroad.” It is unclear exactly what this means, but a later sentence gives a clue – “Many foreign agents offering placement and consultancy services have already thrived in the country, but they are not governed by any rule at the moment.” Perhaps the new regulations will be targeted at foreign education agents operating in Vietnam?
- “The education ministry said it will also introduce new rules to officially recognize foreign accreditation organizations in the country.” Again, the meaning of this is not clear, but it seems to indicate that there will be some form of recognition for third party education agent accreditation and certifications. I can only guess that this refers to ICEF, AIRC, British Council and the like.
All of this gets even more confusing when read in the context of an excellent article from ICEF from August last year titled: Vietnam Removes Agency Certification requirements. The content was mostly provided by Dr Mark A. Ashwill, founder and managing director of Capstone Vietnam.
When you put everything together the story seems to go something like this:
| January 2013 | Vietnamese Government implements new regulations to govern the activities of education agents, including training by the Ministry of Education and Training. |
| July 2016 | The regulation of agents was removed with the aim of reducing red tape. |
| January 2017 | Reports of new regulations being developed, but perhaps only applying to foreign education agents and accreditation bodies? |
So it is fair to say that there is a good deal of uncertainty at the moment when it comes to the regulation of education agents in Vietnam!
When writing about the official back flip when regulations were removed last year, Mark Ashwill advised that the best approach for institutions working with education agents in Vietnam was to:
“…choose carefully, hold your partners accountable, monitor their activities, and reward them for a job well done, which is to help recruit qualified and suitable students for your institution.”
It is another way of saying that educational institutions should implement best practice education agent management and it is excellent advice.
How to Implement Best Practice Education Agent Management
If you are considering your approach to education agent management, please check out AgentBee.
It’s a complete best practice agent management system designed for in-house recruitment teams that:
- Increases enrollments through your agent channel – by making it easy for you to engage with agents regularly and give them easy access to the information and resources they need to recruit for you.
- Saves time for in-house recruitment teams – by making it easy to do the daily tasks involved with managing your agent network – eg updates, training, and performance monitoring.
- Manages risk – by giving you tools to protect your brand and reputation by monitoring agent engagement and performance.