Amid the several intensifying enrollment challenges and policy disruptions higher ed faces, international student enrollment may be the one leading to the most immediate consequences. Most colleges and universities expect that there will be fewer international students coming to the US this fall, and that fear has already caused many institutions to admit more domestic students than planned.
However, schools unable to increase admission numbers may have to face unpleasant aftereffects. In fact, many otherwise robust colleges that looked to be recovering nicely from the government inflicted FAFSA disaster of 2024 now find themselves in a world of financial hurt and must scramble to adjust their funnel management late in the game. However, there are few ways to stay ahead by thinking adaptively about international enrollment:
1. Educate your campus community and key stakeholders
This is a good time to make sure your community, alumni, and donors understand the role that international student recruitment plays at your college and to dispel various narratives that tend to be true of just a few colleges but not most, including:
Are international students admitted mainly to drive revenue? That’s one narrative. In reality, there are very few instances of this. The international students enrolling at the most elite schools do bring revenue, but these schools could replace that revenue with equally affluent domestic students — as they showed this year. For many, if not most colleges, international students tend to require substantial aid.
Are colleges admitting students who really shouldn’t be in the country? Perhaps some, and these instances also seem to raise the question of major funding from suspect sources. But most of these instances are isolated, again, to a few schools and a few segments. The whole question is just one part of a wider contest involving other even larger issues.
For the vast majority of colleges, at a practical level, international enrollment is a matter of mission to offer the most engaging educational environment possible for all students. Most international students will require some assistance to attend. Their enrollment generally will not require the denial of admission to better qualified domestic students.
2. Invest in greater vetting
There is likely to be a more stringent review or simply delay of student visas, especially from particular countries. This is where colleges — especially colleges without a team of international recruitment and business processing specialists will have to tap country-level and security-vetting expertise, perhaps from among alumni with professional expertise.
3. Lean on your network to communicate your mission
Maintain international relationships and reinforce the way in which international recruitment relates to your mission with the schools, alumni, and others who are part of your international network. Be clear about the kinds of students who benefit most from and contribute the most to campus life at your school. Let these constituents be a part of how you explain international enrollment – both the role it plays at your college and what you hope it will mean to your international students, their families, and the contributions they will make in their own countries.
4. Continue to innovate your domestic enrollment strategy
These changes to international student enrollment are just a drop in the bucket of larger demographic shifts happening in higher ed. Add this to the already competitive pricing landscape, and it becomes clear that institutions must not lose focus on recruiting domestically — these students are mission critical for reaching headcount and revenue goals
This is where taking an innovative approach with MARKETview — aiming for key goals through a focus on data revealing critical elements — can help. Real-time data can help you discern how best to buy names, focus tactical efforts for conversion and track the conversion performance and admitting behavior of the market. Being forward-thinking with your domestic recruitment strategy is key in this current environment.
Having watched successful international students at both boarding schools and colleges for many years, my observation is that most of these students and families are interested in the idea and opportunities presented uniquely by this country. At the risk of both dating myself and presenting as the “walked five miles to school barefoot in the snow uphill both ways” type, a couple of memories remain telling.
1. I lived in Denmark for one year while I was in college. One of the first questions I asked my Danish family was, “Why do you want an American student around?” This was during the Vietnam war and many American students sewed Canadian flags on their backpacks to avoid being passed by while hitchhiking. Their answer was quite practical: “We can’t expect the world to learn Danish; it’s an American world — our children will be well served by learning American English and understanding America better.” I was the fifth American college student who had stayed with them. And I wasn’t the last, I hasten to add!
2. Out of curiosity, thinking about how the purpose of international enrollment differs across institutions, I recalled my own graduate school experience at Harvard. The commencement speaker the year I graduated was the president of Germany, celebrating the Marshall Plan. Three years later, the speaker was Helmut Kohl, the Chancellor of Germany who reunified East and West Germany after the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall fell — as a result of American foreign policy and military strength, among many factors. A year earlier, his son had graduated from Harvard. The Chancellor recalled with evident emotion that he had attended those graduation ceremonies like any other proud dad and was glad to be back. Clearly, he saw himself and his family as part of the Harvard community.
While the loudest aspect of campus culture may momentarily be of the “everything is political” ilk, America remains uniquely magnetic. The country is — at least for the near future — the sole superpower and the world’s economic engine; other emerging candidates are hardly proponents of individual freedom or self-government. All this to say; despite the current pressures on international students, the mutual interest between American institutions and foreign students abroad will surely persist.
Book time with our team to see how MARKETview’s real-time data can keep you in the know throughout the enrollment cycle on the student populations that matter most to your goals.