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Political turbulence and the resulting effect on the decline of international student enrollment and revenue is the new normal for many higher education institutions in the U.S. The financial pains are severe with the loss of four years of tuition at the bachelor's-degree level. For 2016/17, new enrollment of undergraduate international students declined by 2.9% or nearly 3,400 students. This translates into a potential revenue loss of US$342 million over four years at the rate of US$25,000 tuition fee. This loss is only going to balloon as the new enrollment is expected to decline for 201 ..read more

In my article, "China and India: Understanding Market Characteristics for Online Recruitment", published in 2009 in NAGAP Perspectives, I advocated that to maximize the return on investment, graduate schools must embrace online recruitment as one of the channels for international student recruitment. The key rationale was that the student-decision-making process was rapidly moving towards a more self-directed search-behavior supported by peer-to-peer based on online communication and social networks. Today, we are at an inflexion point where online recruitment is moving from one of the rec ..read more

The diplomatic and political tussle between Saudi Arabia and Canada is going to disrupt the lives and educational ambitions of Saudi student. It will also hurt enrollments of Canadian universities hosting Saudi students. This political turbulence is characteristics of the Third Wave of international student mobility which has already affected the UK with Brexit and the US with the Presidential elections. After the drastic reduction of Saudi Government's scholarship program, many American universities have already experienced the risky scenario of decline in enrollment due to dependency on Saud ..read more

Global competition for international students is becoming intense. Institutional strategies that align with student segments and deliver on the promise of value for money will become the key differentiators of institutional success. This is the key message of my article "Recalibrating value for money for international students" published in University World News. Given below is an excerpt. How do we define value for money? The relatively simple and universal definition of “value for money” according to the Oxford English Dictionary is “reasonableness of cost of something in view of its perc ..read more

Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) announced the names of six Institutions of Eminence (IoE) with the overarching goal of institutions achieving global rankings and the status of world-class universities. Here is an excerpt from "The tough road to academic excellence" originally published in the Hindu with Philip G. Altbach with a focus on India's richest man--Mukesh Ambani’s "greenfield" Jio Institute. The Institute faces significant challenges which includes clarity on the basic organising principle. How does it plan to differentiate itself from other universities in India and ..read more

Next 15 years are expected to be dramatically different from the previous 15 years due to megatrends--“a long-term, transformational process with global reach, broad scope, and a dramatic impact” (John Naisbitt, 1982). Are universities and colleges ready? Here is an excerpt from a recent article--Megatrends Prompt Universities to Innovate and Internationalize. Recent Studyportals report, “Envisioning pathways to 2030: Megatrends shaping the future of global higher education and international student mobility” identified following eight megatrends transforming global higher education ..read more

Public-private partnerships are becoming critical for US higher education. I moderated a panel discussion of leaders from universities and pathway providers to identify some of the best practices for building successful public-private partnership for international enrollment growth and diversification. Given below is the panel of university and its pathway partner: Ed Feser, Provost & Executive Vice President, Oregon State University  John Sykes, Co-Founder and Executive Vice President North America, INTO University Partnerships  Gayle Nunley, Director Global Educational Initi ..read more

Inside Higher Ed ran a series on the evolution of third-party pathway programs for international student recruitment in the US. This comprehensive and incisive reporting by Elizabeth Redden looks into multiple dimensions related to this complex and evolving topic. It relates to the NAFSA commissioned research report I led on the landscape third-party pathway partnerships and the reasons reported by international education professionals for considering to partner or not. The article highlights that "Colleges have turned to the third-party pathway model for one main reason: to grow the populati ..read more

Conference theme for British Columbia Council for International Education (BCCIE) Summer Conference for 2018 is "Things we should be talking about in International Education." This theme prompts us to reflect on "what we think we are doing, and why, by poking holes in some of the assumptions embedded in International Education, by looking at things we are talking about, by suggesting things we should be talking about." It asserts that "Our sector casts a long shadow and there may be other things we should be talking about:...our culling of the top economic strata from the global South’s ..read more