Foreign agents locked out (2)

Local vs foreign

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported in July that New Zealand officials discovered that applications from 279 Chinese students contained fraudulent and forged content, and "China-based" agencies were to blame for the falsified information, which included tertiary qualifications and bank statements.

Of course, foreign agencies are also guilty of cheating students, but unlike domestic agencies, which are often the subject of tales of fraud on the Chinese blogosphere, a cursory online search of fraud by foreign agencies fails to yield significant results.

In one case, a Web user surnamed Huang said she lost two opportunities to study abroad in 2009 because of an Australian agency. She claimed that she lost the first opportunity because the agency did not send the offer with her signature back to the university she had applied for, although the agency insisted that they had. When she received an offer from a second university via the same agency, she was threatened and told to pay a fee for both applications, or risk losing the chance to get a visa.