If an education agent pointed you toward a specific course because of the commission it paid rather than because it fit your goals, the provider that engaged that agent is the one legally accountable for it.
Providers Are Responsible for Their Agents' Conduct
Under the Education Services for Overseas Students (ESOS) Act framework, registered providers who engage education agents to recruit international students remain legally responsible for ensuring those agents act ethically, professionally, and in the genuine interests of prospective students — not just in the interests of the commission they'll earn. The National Code of Practice for Providers of Education and Training to Overseas Students, made under the ESOS Act, sets specific expectations for how providers must manage their agent relationships, including monitoring agent conduct and taking action against agents who breach these standards.
The Commission Structure Problem
Education agents are typically paid commission by the provider whose course a student enrolls in — commonly cited in industry discussion as ranging roughly from 15% to 30%+ of first-year tuition, though exact rates vary by provider and market. This structure creates an obvious potential conflict: an agent has a direct financial incentive to steer a prospective student toward whichever provider pays the highest commission, rather than the course genuinely best suited to that student's goals, academic background, or career plans. This isn't automatically improper — legitimate agents operate within this commission model responsibly every day — but it becomes a problem when an agent actively misrepresents a course, conceals the commission relationship, or pressures a student toward an unsuitable option specifically because of the payment involved.
What Providers Are Required to Do
- Have a written agreement with each agent setting out expected conduct standards.
- Take corrective action, including ending the agent relationship, where an agent is found to have engaged in unethical or misleading conduct toward students.
- Not knowingly benefit from an agent's improper conduct — a provider can't simply claim ignorance of an agent's practices it should reasonably have been monitoring.
What to Do If You Suspect You Were Misled
- Document exactly what the agent told you, when, and how it differed from what you later discovered about the course, institution, or your own suitability for it.
- Keep any written communication (emails, messages) with the agent, since this is your strongest evidence of what was actually represented.
- Raise the issue directly with the provider first, referencing that agent conduct is the provider's responsibility under the ESOS framework and National Code — providers have a genuine interest in addressing agent misconduct, since it exposes them to regulatory risk.
- If unresolved, this can be escalated as a formal complaint to the relevant state or territory training regulator, or for higher education specifically, considered alongside a complaint to the Ombudsman for the sector.
- Report serious or repeated agent misconduct patterns, since regulators track this across providers, not just individual complaints.
Related Kibbo Tools
Sources
- Australian Government — Education Services for Overseas Students (ESOS) Act 2000 and National Code. internationaleducation.gov.au