A large number of Chinese applicants use education agents to apply for overseas programs, and agents are one of the most significant influence factors on Chinese international students’ choice of overseas programs. However, there is limited research around agents’ experiences within the existing information landscape of international higher education. For example, information asymmetries between agents and universities may have an impact on the advice and guidance provided for international applicants. This research investigates agents’ practices with in-service Chinese applicants to UK universities in the context of information asymmetry. COVID-19 serves as a backdrop as an illustrative case of a period of high information uncertainty, which has generated severe challenges for the international higher education sector and for Chinese applicants’ plans to study overseas. This study reports on the findings from in-depth interviews with 16 Chinese agent consultants undertaken in nine cities across China in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic (May 2020). The findings indicate that education agents attempt to mitigate the information asymmetry and emotionally reassure applicants through a four-step information management process. Our contribution generates a new understanding of the role that education agents play in international students’ applications and mobility, voices that are often ignored but essential for international students’ decision-making processes and existing university recruitment services.

On March 11, 2020, COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. Soon afterward, in the international higher education sector, most in-person activities on campus were cancelled and the majority of courses were moved online. This resulted in many university staff and faculty working around the clock to deal with the unplanned and unprepared shift to distance teaching and learning. In addition, international students’ university applications, including their visa applications and English language tests, were impeded by the high level of uncertainty caused by COVID-19 (Yang et al., 2020). An ongoing QS survey (2020) indicates that, in April 2020, 53% of international offer holders have had their plans to study abroad impacted by uncertainty during COVID-19. Thousands of Chinese international students in the United Kingdom attempted to leave during the spring 2020 semester and, in some cases, even tried to charter airplanes home (The Guardian, 2020). In this sense, COVID-19 can serve as an illustrative case of a period of high information uncertainty. Amid this backdrop, severe challenges for the international higher education sector have been generated (Fischer, 2020). International student mobilities and enrollment in a time of great uncertainty have become top concerns for international higher education providers, policy makers, and researchers.

Indeed, considerable attention has been devoted to exploring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on international students’ experiences and intentions (QS, 2020; Siczek, 2020; Tran, 2020). However, a scarcity of research investigates these issues from the perspective of education agents, who are key actors in the international student recruitments (Falcone, 2017) and play a significant role in international students’ choice of overseas programs (Hagedorn & Zhang, 2011; Yen et al., 2012). This means a number of questions about agents’ practices during this period remain, namely: How did education agents interact with students during COVID? How did agents perceive their role in this particular time? Understanding these issues will bring fresh and valuable insights into international students’ decision-making processes at times of uncertainty, which identifies insightful implications for international higher education during and beyond COVID-19.

This paper commences by exploring the context of this research, including the marketization of international higher education, information asymmetry in the international higher education market, and education agents. It then illustrates the methodology of this research involving participants and setting, data collection, analysis approach, ethics, and limitation. It ends with key findings and a discussion, and it identifies important implications for international higher education outside COVID-19, along with proposing the future research questions.

In the wake of globalizing neoliberalism, the discourses of marketization emerged within the higher education sector worldwide, which is associated with the exponential growth of international student mobility (Arkoudis et al., 2019). Recent research outlines both demand and supply factors in this particular quasi-market to stimulate international student mobilities (Findlay et al., 2017; Lomer, 2018). From the perspective of the demand side, international students are framed as consumers (Marginson, 2013) who intend to make “rational” economic choices and expect to improve their employability in an increasingly competitive global job market through international higher education (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2020). From the perspective of the supply side, as public funds to higher education were shrunk in many host countries, universities compete for prestige to attract students and expand the recruitment of fee-paying international students as an alternative source of income (Foskett, 2011).

As a result, as in other markets, many intermediaries get involved in the international higher education market, such as education agents who provide recruitment services for both international students and universities (Findlay et al., 2017). The size of the education agent sector in China (Zhang & Fumasoli, 2019) and growth in recent years is also an indicator of overt marketization. This particular quasi-market displays characteristics that are distinct from a pure market system led by the relationship between seller and buyer on the basis of the price mechanism (Tomlinson, 2018). For example, higher education (HE) is a post-experience and an invisible product whose value is reflected via long-term impact (Tomlinson, 2018) with limited opportunity of repeat purchase (Foskett, 2011) or exchange. Competition in this market is not oriented by “orthodox economic bottom lines” (Marginson, 2013, p. 357), but it is constrained by government intervention, though economic rewards coincide with success in this competition. In this sense, the considerations of both international students (buyers) and overseas universities (sellers) in this special market context are, by their very nature, more complicated.

In neoliberal terms, information for consumers to make decisions about purchases is a key prerequisite for a pure market. Government agencies and the media produce information with the intention of guiding students to make comparable judgments, such as institutional rankings and league tables. Many governments require the publication of institutional metrics, programs, curricula, services, tuition fees, and so on; they seek to make the information transparent through the audit and inspection of governments or quangos (Foskett, 2011). However, in fact, such measurements and metrics have limitations, such as a lack of transparency of how to weigh those indicators. In some domestic contexts, such as the United Kingdom, information is associated with teaching satisfaction; for instance, the Teaching Excellence Framework omits international students’ perspectives (Hayes, 2019).

One continuing issue is whether international students, as potential consumers, can access and understand sufficient information to help them make choices. For international students, geographic distance and language barriers may hinder acquiring enough information about higher education abroad (Coffey, 2014), as well as likely cultural differences. Some international students encounter great information asymmetries before their arrival, leading to apparent deficits in preparedness for their course (Marginson et al., 2010; Sá & Sabzalieva, 2018). Therefore, there is an issue of information asymmetry between potential international students and universities abroad.

Information asymmetry is a concept drawn from economic literature that explains, as Stiglitz (2003) describes, how some information is initially possessed by one party involved in a purchase rather than all the parties involved. Issues arise among actors in specific markets (Akerlof, 1970; Rothschild & Stiglitz, 1976; Spence, 1973), which are likely to lead to adverse selection (Akerlof, 1970), meaning that potential buyers are unhappy if they perceive that sellers possess more information, resulting in the potential to feel “cheated,” and therefore they decide not to buy the product.

Applied to international HE, in the rational decision-making process, pronounced information asymmetry is likely to give rise to adverse selection where international students will not choose to go abroad for study if they do not have sufficient knowledge of courses and universities. On the other hand, however, in the less rational decision-making process, to some extent, information gaps contribute to the formation of a fad of study abroad. Constrained by limited information, some international students may base their choices simply on the current trend of studying abroad and/or personal feelings. In addition, Wankhade and Dabade (2006) differentiate between two kinds of information asymmetry. One is general information asymmetry, referring to potential buyers lacking full information about products in the particular market. The second is product information asymmetry, such that sellers do not effectively depict their product to the potential consumer. In the international HE market, typically universities (sellers) set out their information on websites, such as admission requirements, course description, and tuition fees. However, this information may be difficult for international students to interpret, for example, students still feel confused about how to prepare documents up to admission criteria (Hagedorn & Zhang, 2011). Therefore, there is significant general information asymmetry in the international market.

To address information asymmetry, in pure markets, Akerlof (1970) suggests that counteracting institutions could mitigate quality uncertainty effectively, such as product guarantees, brand names, and chains. Subsequently, using “signals” such as education credentials (Spence, 1973) and “screening mechanism” (Rothschild & Stiglitz, 1976) are also identified as effective approaches to filling information gaps. In practice, however, there does not appear to be much research indicating a uniform institution or effective measures to resolve these issues in the international HE market so far.

In recent years, education agents have emerged as an active part of international recruitment and university applications (Collins, 2012; Nikula, 2020). Agents are organizations and/or individuals who provide a range of services in exchange for a fee from their service users, including overseas higher education institutions and/or students who will study or are studying abroad (Krasocki, 2002; Nikula & Kivistö, 2018). Recent research indicates that a large number of universities in top host countries, such as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, rely heavily on agents’ services to secure advantageous positions in the competition of international student recruitment (Nikula, 2020; Raimo et al., 2014). At the same time, a large quantity of international students, especially from China, use agents to apply to overseas programs (Hagedorn & Zhang, 2011; Universities UK, 2017). In this regard, education agents are listed as one of the top five factors influencing undergraduate international students’ choice of study destination (Universities UK, 2017). Therefore, the role of education agents cannot be overlooked in the studies of the international higher education market.

Applications to programs at the postgraduate level involve similar steps within most universities in the popular host countries. They accept applications via their individual application system and require similar application documents for international applicants, including online application forms, academic transcripts, reference letters, English language test scores, and personal statement (motivation letter). Some programs may have their specific requirement, such as scores of GMAT2 or GRE.3 Finally, the application results will be released on the due date or on the rolling basis. Hagedorn and Zhang (2011) suggest that lots of Chinese international students who use agents possess less knowledge about the application processes, universities in other countries, as well as visa application, which results in difficulties in choosing programs to apply to. Preparing the application documents is another typical dilemma, particularly writing personal statements that is new to them. Completing application forms makes some students frustrated because of the repetitive information collection. Further, preparing standardized English language tests is also challenging, as it is hard to achieve the necessary English language entry requirement in a short time (Hagedorn & Zhang, 2011).

Education agents provide an attentive “one-stop shop” for potential international students (Hagedorn & Zhang, 2011; Pimpa, 2003; Robinson-pant & Magyar, 2018), which can be categorized into five main services:

In China, since the early 2000s, the Ministry of Education has promoted market-based education reform aiming at diversifying education revenues and improving the quality of education, in keeping with many of the global trends toward neoliberal practices. In this context, international education in both the public and private sectors sprang up within China, along with the burgeoning trend of study abroad (Liu, 2020). More and more prospective Chinese international students, struggling with information gaps about overseas education, reached out to the third-party education agents for help, such that the industry of education agencies mushroomed in China’s market (Ma, 2020). The Chinese Bureau of Supervision and Administration of Foreign Affairs in Education [CBSAFA] (2019) reports that there are 555 registered private education agents across 30 provinces in China. However, there are no systematic data about the number of agents of different types. Individual agents or agencies, analogous to school counselors in the international divisions of China’s school (Ma, 2021), organize their work by dividing labor into two key roles: communicators and processors (Yang et al., 2020). Communicators, similar to navigators, are primarily responsible for promoting overseas universities and advising about the choices of schools and programs alongside informing about the application progress. Processors, in contrast, similar to nannies, take care of every detail of application operations, visa processing, and pre-arrival services.

Education agents’ services play a significant role in bridging the information asymmetry gap between students and universities. However, despite their utility, there are concerns and criticism related to some agents’ unethical practices, such as providing students with false or inaccurate information, overpromising students, breaching the bribery registration, forging documents, writing personal letters on behalf of students, and so on. These issues may give rise to issues such as accepting unqualified students, which may damage the image of institutions or the host country as a high-quality education destination by definition (Nikula & Kivistö, 2018; Raimo Humfrey & Huang, 2014).

Currently, during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, various discussions, concerns, and uncertainties arise among key actors of the international HE market. We assume that information asymmetries have been exacerbated alongside such a great uncertainty in this particular market. In light of the widespread use of education agents among Chinese applicants and the great influence of education agents on Chinese applicants’ choice of programs in the United Kingdom, we aimed at exploring education agents’ practices during the COVID-19 crisis. Therefore, this research aims at using information asymmetry to investigate education agents’ practices with their in-service students, who were in the process of applying to UK universities during the pandemic. We had two research questions:

Building on these two questions, we explored a new information landscape where education agents play an important mediating role in the relationship between Chinese students and UK universities.

Our research aim was to develop deeper insights into the practices of education agents during a period of great uncertainty. As such, the approach for collecting data involved semi-structured interviews. Given travel restrictions during the pandemic, all interviews took place online by using video calls. As the primary researcher previously worked as an education agent, we initially approached participants within this existing network; then, we relied on a snowball method to recruit other agent consultants who worked at different education agencies. Between May 1 and 15, 2020, 16 agent consultants who were specifically responsible for UK cases participated in this research, including 13 communicators and 3 processors (see Table 1). They were from 16 different education agencies located in 10 cities across China. Among these education agencies, 14 agencies were large enterprises (i.e., agencies with branches located in different cities); two agencies were small companies (i.e., agencies without branches consisting of several members).

The interview questions were developed in reflection of the literature, based on the steps that in-service students go through with agent consultants after signing the service contract (Yang, 2019). During the interviews, participants were asked questions about their work modes, consulting services, application services, students’ inquiries and concerns, information sources, and delivery, particularly in light of the COVID-19 crisis. The interviews were conducted in Chinese and audio-recorded, lasting approximately 1.5 hrs each time.

Throughout the interviews, nearly all the participants categorized their professional roles across four themes: tracking application statuses, forwarding information, counseling, and processing follow-up work. As we wished to develop a reflective understanding of experiences within each of these categories between interview participants, thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) was used to analyze the data. In the first phase, familiarization with the data was developed by transcribing all interviews and conducting multiple in-depth readings. In the second phase, initial codes were developed to categorize key and recurring concepts. There were 38 codes generated in total. In the third phase, the main themes were developed by collating the coded lines and/or paragraphs in an additional in-depth read of the data. In the fourth phase, with the concepts of information asymmetry and information management in mind, the developed themes were reviewed several times by checking the codes in detail, new extracts were included, and similar codes were integrated. In the fifth phase, the four themes—“finding information,” “confirming information,” “interpreting and selecting information,” and “elaborating and communicating the selected information”—were identified and finalized, based on the steps of participants’ information processing and management. Then, all the relevant codes were reorganized and assigned to the corresponding themes. Finally, based on the four themes, agents’ information practices with in-service students during the COVID-19 crisis were examined through the lens of information asymmetry.

The invitation letter, consent form, and information sheet of the research project were emailed to each participant. After receiving participants’ consent, each interview was scheduled. In the course of the interviews, none of the questions were seen as personally sensitive or controversial topics. All the personal identifiable information had been anonymized or deleted.

First, this research solely investigated education agents’ reflections on their work practice with students and UK universities during the COVID-19 crisis; this influences the understanding of the actual effect of their practices on both their in-service students and UK universities. Second, the length and type of work experience in this industry is likely to influence perceptions, and precisely how these experiences shape agents’ perceptions could not be explored in sufficient detail here. We recommend that future work extrapolates from this insight and incorporates this into the sampling strategy and research design.

This research finds that the information asymmetry between many Chinese applicants (potential buyers) and UK universities (sellers) was heightened during the COVID-19 crisis. Education agents attempted not only to mitigate the asymmetries through four-step information management but also to reassure their in-service students. Because the themes and processes are complex, we have introduced the data and interpreted it briefly in this section, before extending this into the conceptual framework in the final section.

Participants’ accounts indicate that applications for pre-sessional language courses, which is supposed to be the most important area of work in spring, became particularly burdensome.

The majority of Chinese applicants had not yet taken an English language test or did not have satisfactory English language scores when applying for the programs abroad (by the end of 2019). The IELTS test centers closed in mainland China after the COVID-19 outbreak in January 2020, which directly impacted many Chinese applicants’ plans to take the test in February, causing great anxiety. Many students had no idea about how to overcome these obstacles and turned to agents with inquiries about English language tests and pre-sessional courses early in the COVID-19 crisis.

Students’ applications were impeded by the uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic for a significant period. Students did not know how UK universities would deal with this situation, as UK universities did not give prompt responses, which enlarged the information asymmetry. As a result, their university applications were temporarily stalled.

Again, it shows that in uncertain times, for many Chinese applicants, the information gap regarding intended programs appears to be heightened, which can be characterized as general information asymmetry (Wankhade & Dabade, 2006). At the same time, students as potential buyers intend to confirm information and expect more information before making decisions, which chimes with Akerlof’s information asymmetry theory (1970), which states that buyers tend to use the market statistics to measure the value of the goods, although the sellers have richer knowledge of their goods.

Moreover, during the COVID-19 crisis, UK universities appeared to lack information about their prospective international students. The participants reflected that UK universities contacted their offer holders more frequently and closely than earlier. Various surveys regarding offer holders’ plans for the coming academic year were received by their in-service students continuously while these students were invited to join university welcome WeChat groups during the pandemic.

In line with product information asymmetry (Wankhade & Dabade, 2006), UK universities (sellers) themselves were uncertain about their policies and services and could not release their information explicitly. Further, as university services and policies were entwined with international students’ choices, it seems that UK universities needed their prospective students’ information to inform decisions and policies. In this sense, during the COVID-19 crisis, there appeared to be a reciprocal information asymmetry and even information absence between UK universities and prospective international students, which differs from the one-way information asymmetry identified in previous literature.

Confronting the heightened information asymmetry depicted earlier, education agents employed a four-step information management approach (see Figure 1): (1) for in-service students in four steps of information management: (1) finding information; (2) confirming information; (3) selecting information; and (4) communicating information. In this way, agents attempted to mitigate information asymmetry as much as possible, apart from comforting their in-service students.

1) Finding information

During the COVID-19 crisis, education agents proactively took measures to understand their in-service students’ needs while managing students’ applications.

Interviews indicate that communicators made regular calls to their in-service students to understand students’ learning status and any changing thoughts on study-abroad plans. They made notes of each student’s test plans and checked up their study progress whenever necessary. Some participants said during the interviews that they were required to call their students at least once every two or three days, or once a week. By contrast, some participants argued that it should depend on the progress of students’ cases and characteristics. On some occasions, frequent contacts could be counterproductive, annoying students. The approach to checking could be flexible.

Education agents, as noted earlier, similar to nannies, kept a close eye on their students’ progress and learned their students’ needs during the COVID-19 crisis, thereby providing feasible solutions in a timely manner. Therefore, education agents have access to in-depth information of students during uncertain times.

Participants described a common practice to manage in-service students’ applications: checking through the work-in-progress form, which captured and consolidated information about each stage of each student’s application. It was an essential tool to follow up on progress and help students consult admission offices for further information when necessary.

In addition, a common view among participants was that universities in the United Kingdom had regular times when they would update application statuses, which updates of the work-in-progress forms would highlight. If necessary, they would follow up with admission offices before students asked them to do so. For example, Processor 5 mentioned,

Students may not get a sense of the timing of university applications, which is likely to influence necessary decision making or steps to be taken in a timely manner. In this regard, education agents help students to fill this knowledge gap and recognize the particular points in time in terms of university applications, which contributes to progressing students’ applications.

2) Confirming information

Participants reflected that during the COVID-19 crisis, information associated with admission requirements and policies of UK universities spread far and wide. Education agents confirmed the validity of the information as soon as they received it. As for information from social media or other students, education agents would contact the university admission offices for confirmation. For the information directly emailed by universities or circulated by university representatives, education agents would not verify it, but they may ask for further information to clarify the guidance.

In such uncertain times, the proliferation of information caused confusion as inaccurate or false information conflicted with accurate updates. Education agents help students to ignore any misleading information by confirmation of guidance with universities.

3) Selecting information

Due to the pressure generated by a large amount of information and uncertainty, education agents evaluated and selected only the most relevant information to send to their students. This included information from the universities where their students applied or decided to do their in-service studies.

Education agents appear to evaluate the importance of information, and to filter overwhelming information and select only key points. The interviewed participants highlighted that they would also provide comments and opinions on the key information. In addition, if any information was likely to negatively influence students’ motivation for studying abroad, they neither disseminated it nor even brought it up of their own accord. However, they would discuss this information in their own words if students raised such questions with them.

This also demonstrates that education agents are trying to cut off conduits of commentary and/or subjective negative information about overseas education. In this sense, education agents may guide students and their parents to think about overseas education in a particular direction that is not being driven by the consideration of students’ best interests. Precisely, students and their parents potentially receive only part of the information, and may be misled by the incomplete picture, which echoes the public’s concern on agents’ unethical practices (Raimo et al., 2014).

4) Communicating information

One key strategy during the COVID-19 crisis, particularly for large enterprises, was to maintain consistent broadcast information updates. They continued holding regular webinars and online education fairs, and they carefully posted and circulated “generally valuable information” through WeChat moments and WeChat client groups. In participants’ words, valuable information refers to policies released by UK universities, measures being taken by the UK government, as well as reports published by important organizations such as British Council. This sort of “generally valuable information” supplements the specific information targeting in-service students, contributing to students’ access to market information.

For in-service students on an individual basis, during the COVID-19 crisis, education agents typically elaborated on the selected information one to one via WeChat or phone; then, they edited formal notices, briefly translating the original information into Chinese and underlining the deadlines and related requirements; and finally, they delivered them by email or WeChat. Agents proposed possible options for specific issues and detailed their pros and cons, respectively, as well. Some participants argued in the interviews that they had to consider their own livelihood and should lead students to make the decision to study abroad; we characterize these as “hard sellers,” who were typically financially motivated. While communicating with students, they would emphasize the value of study abroad and potential opportunities emerging in the pandemic, to encourage students to study abroad.

By contrast, other participants addressed that they solely explained the issues in detail and fully respected students’ considerations or decisions, and they would not ask them to make any decision in this unusual time, as they felt that current issues and decisions involved students’ health and safety, about which they should be very cautious. These agents can be characterized as “information providers,” who are motivated more by students’ welfare and agency.

This suggests that education agents have different perceptions of their work, which may influence their strategies of guiding students to interpret the information. For the financial-motivated agents, they are very likely to solely convey positive information and even exaggerate the value of overseas education, to influence students’ understanding of the situation and decision making. In contrast, other agents appear less interest-led and adopt an ostensibly neutral position in transmitting information. Although this research does not point out agents’ reflections on their possibly misleading behaviors, as mentioned earlier, the information delivered by agents is likely to be oriented toward producing desired outcomes rather than increasing students’ understanding of UK universities, which creates opportunities for agents’ unethical conduct.

Frequently, however, participants reported feeling at a loss, unable to answer many questions raised by students and their parents. In terms of advice on studying abroad, agents felt themselves less capable during the pandemic than earlier.

The information that education agents possessed in a quickly changing situation was also limited, which constrained their potential to circulate valid information from universities to their students. In this case, they tried to chat with students and spread positivity to reassure students and retain their positive attitudes toward study abroad.

Apart from delivering information to in-service students, education agents also helped students reflect issues to UK universities in the hope of getting solutions.

Agents’ active contacts with UK universities are helpful to inform universities of their prospective students’ problems and situations to implement timely solutions. Further, while waiting for universities’ responses, agents explained the universities’ situations and arranged feasible work for students, which actually also helped fill in the students’ information gap on what universities were doing during the pandemic. In this sense, we highlight a significant role that education agents play in reciprocally circulating information between Chinese applicants and UK universities. During this process, however, education agents may not have consistently or fully expressed students’ concerns, as they may not have fully reported on universities’ policies or the decisions that students would react negatively to. Education agents could, therefore, invisibly influence the decisions of both students and universities.

This section connects education agents’ information practices during the COVID-19 crisis to the conceptual framework of information asymmetry, and it explores a different role of education agents in prospective Chinese students’ applications to UK universities in uncertain times. In the context of the international higher education market, information asymmetry (Akerlof, 1970) assumes that prospective Chinese students are very likely to choose not to study in the United Kingdom, when they do not have enough information about their intended programs.

Our research demonstrates that it was reciprocal information asymmetry and even information absence that occurred between UK universities and Chinese applicants during the pandemic. The majority of agents’ in-service students, indeed, had not at this point made a decision to study or not for the coming academic year. We discuss education agents’ four steps of information management, which reveals the agents’ efforts to bridge the information gap between both parties and to enable their in-service students to get access to their university places. Our findings contribute to previous literature related to education agents by unfolding a new picture of their information practices and outlining different positions within the information landscape for agents, Chinese applicants, and UK universities during a time of great uncertainty (see Figure 2).

The COVID-19 pandemic created increasing uncertainty about UK universities for international applicants. The included questions were about when universities would reopen, the format courses would take, how travel would work, how language could be assessed, how rules and norms for socialization would work, and what a university experience would look like. Confirmed information was in high demand for many Chinese applicants, which led them to reach out to their agents for advice. Many in-service students tended to rely on agents to contact UK universities. In the meantime, education agents discerned that UK universities were uncertain about their policies and services for the forthcoming academic year and also needed much information about their prospective students’ intended plans. At times, UK universities bypassed agents and proactively approached their prospective students by themselves in the forms of surveys and emails, while still keeping in touch with their agents. It is clear that students and universities were in need of others’ information during the pandemic, but both parties did not appear to get in touch with each other effectively.

In this case, as Figure 2 indicates, during the COVID-19 crisis, education agents played a profound role as information brokers in managing flows between their in-service students and UK universities, particularly in information circulation with their in-service students. This differs from previous research showing that education agents primarily provide operational application services for their students (Raimo et al., 2014; Thomson et al., 2014). Through proactively seeking students’ information and continuously receiving inquiries, education agents acquired students’ information in a prompt and timely manner. At the same time, agents delivered students’ information to UK universities in an attempt to access further inside information or possible solutions. In effect, agents did receive UK universities’ responses and the latest policies, but this sort of information was often still inexplicit and subject to continuous revision, as the university policies and decisions were developed and changed in response to the changing COVID-19 pandemic. In their interactions with students, education agents selectively conveyed university information to their in-service students, confirming, selecting, and communicating this information. Despite the absence of university information in many cases, agents kept explaining the situation of UK universities to their in-service students to temporarily reassure students. In this way, information continued to flow between UK universities, Chinese applicants, and education agents during the COVID-19 crisis. The design of this study relied on agents’ own accounts of their practices, which may understate unethical behaviors.

This case study creates insights into information flow within and among three key actors in the international higher education market during the COVID-19 crisis, namely students, universities, and agents. It identifies three important implications for this specific market beyond COVID-19. First, the issues of information lag and gap are built into the international higher education market, which should draw the close attention of international higher education providers and policy makers, as it has caused temporary suspensions of university applications in uncertain times. Second, UK universities’ decisions and policies largely depend on prospective international students and vice versa, which points to the significance of effective connections between UK universities and international students, especially in the time of great uncertainties. Above all, this research highlights the value of education agents in filling in the information gap and circulating information between prospective international students and UK universities in this particular market. However, the information circulated to students by education agents is selective and filtered, which is potentially problematic. For example, agents may only transmit information in their interest to students, which would mislead students’ decision making. Agents are also likely to partially reflect the students’ situation to universities, resulting in inappropriate decisions made by universities. In light of this, future research could cast light on the context of China’s neoliberal education, how Chinese international students and universities perceive these practices, and how education agents interpret information they possess and select information for their service users (including prospective Chinese international students and universities overseas).