Taken-for-granted understandings in access to international higher education: A study of Chinese agent-user students’ university application experiences

In the marketised international higher education sector, education agents appear to become important intermediaries in international student recruitment campaigns. However, there remains a significant gap in our knowledge of how the widespread use of education agents today impacts (in)equalities in access to international higher education. To respond to this gap, this paper focuses on Chinese students who use education agents to apply for master’s programmes overseas (Chinese agent-user students) and investigates their university application experiences. This empirical part of the paper is based on longitudinal semi-structured interviews, conducted with 10 Chinese agent-user students from November 2020 to July 2022, and uses Bourdieu’s concept of doxa for data analysis. The findings suggest that using education agents, (re)taking Shui courses “水课” in Chinese universities, and applying for overseas Shui programmes “水专业” have become norms in Chinese agent-user students’ university applications overseas. Shui ”水” represents “water-down” and inflation. Shui courses represent courses having little to do with interests or expertise but more with obtaining satisfying grades without much effort. Shui programmes refer to not strong programmes at top universities overseas. Furthermore, the results illustrate that education agents play a symbolic dominance in overseas university application competitions, as they ostensibly work for Chinese agent-user students to facilitate their applications and advance their position in the competition. However, they fundamentally consolidate UK universities’ hierarchies by stimulating application numbers. Copyright © 2025 The Author(s).