And I am not the only saying that you never ever should use recruiters and contact schools directly instead.

Certainly, and you don't need a doctorate or even a master's degree to know that recruiters are crap for the most part. Here's a rather fresh (but at the same time old because it's happened too many times before), true story I picked up from an acquaintance of mine who used a recruiter: He was contracted to a private training center who promised to pay him 9000rmb per month along with getting him a legal working visa. After he goes there, he gets told he will be working for 6500rmb a month teacher 80 hours a month. To top it all off the recruiter supposedly took his whole month's salary to start so he worked the 1st month for nothing. When he emails the recruiter asking about this he gets threatened with deportation. Of course, the training center tells him they will hire him directly and he will be starting "new" with them from the beginning of the 2nd month. In the meantime, he is still waiting on a legitimate working visa...

The more things change with the "development" of some places, the more crappy business practices stay the same.