International enrollment - filling a budget gap rather than serving students

The New York Times profiled Western Kentucky University for the problems it has encountered after using recruiters to bolster its full-pay international student enrollment. WKU is only one of many examples where the use of recruiters has resulted in students arriving on site with inadequate English and academic preparation to be successful. The President of WKU, Dr. Gary Ransdell, indicated that the university had long sought to increase international enrollment as an educational resource for its domestic students. The decision to enlist the help of recruiters is where the strategy appears to have gone wrong.

A follow-up by Inside Higher Education found that 25 of the 60 Indian students who were admitted to WKU through recruiting agents were unfit to study in the computer science program.