This article is part of a series of posts written by NAFSA Global Partners. These institutions represent a broad range of perspectives, develop innovative approaches that enrich the field, and bring a wealth of expertise to the international education community. This post was provided by InUni Global, the internationalization arm of Global University Systems and a NAFSA Global Partner. Denver Muirhead is director of strategy at InUni Global.
Across offices and meeting rooms at U.S. higher education institutions, similar conversations are taking place. Financial assumptions and risk assessments are being reevaluated. Leaders are trying to work out which of the surprises from the previous cycle were one-off shocks, and which represent structural shifts that institutions will be navigating for years to come.
The numbers are not encouraging. The Institute of International Education's (IIE) Fall 2025 Snapshot on International Student Enrollment, released in November 2025, revealed that new international enrollment at U.S. institutions declined by 17 percent between the 2024–25 and 2025–26 academic years, contributing to a 7 percent decline in overall enrollment, excluding students who are participating in the Optional Practical Training.
NAFSA's economic analysis of the data estimates that the decline in the new enrollment translates to a $1.1 billion decrease in international student contributions to the U.S. economy and almost 23,000 fewer jobs supported. All three major rating agencies—Fitch Ratings, Moody's, and S&P Global Ratings—have issued negative or deteriorating 2026 outlooks for the higher education sector, each citing the international student pipeline among their concerns. Many institutions are responding by attempting to shore up domestic recruitment and taking a more aggressive approach to scenario planning. While defensive actions like these can help, they don't constitute a real strategy.
The theme of the NAFSA 2026 Annual Conference & Expo, "Global by Design," invites us to take a fresh look at our processes, structures, and practices and to refresh, redesign, or remodel outdated strategies. But what does intentional design look like in practice? It means taking a hard look at countries and programs where the institution is overexposed. And in a world where regulators across every major destination market expect documented, auditable, and defensible processes, intentional design means identifying and overhauling any operating models that were built for a different era.
It also means looking beyond legacy destinations and embracing new opportunities. In 2025, South Korea hit its target of hosting 300,000 international students two years ahead of schedule. The United Arab Emirates now captures a significant share of regional student search interest and Saudi Arabia is ramping up overseas branch campuses as a part of the country's Vision 2030. Students are looking beyond the historically dominant Big Four countries and institutions must also.
The question underpinning all of these explorations and concerns is one international education leaders all over the world are asking themselves and their teams: What should internationalization look like in the years and decades ahead, and are our current strategies and practices aligned with that vision?
InUni Global's Approach
InUni Global is the internationalization arm of Global University Systems (GUS), a network of 31 institutions and more than 174,000 students, spanning four continents and maintaining an operational presence in 45+ markets. Through our work, we've learned that internationalization rarely fails for lack of ambition, but rather, for lack of integration. Often, strategy sits in one office, recruitment in another, admissions in a third, compliance in a fourth, program development somewhere else again—each team doing good work but siloed to some degree. The institutions that are excelling in internationalization in 2026 aren't the ones with the largest budgets or the most prestigious brands. Rather, they're the ones that have designed their international initiatives as a coherent system, one in which strategy, brand, recruitment, admissions, compliance, and program development—and the in-country presence and technology that support these areas—all seamlessly work together.
This is the model we've built our practice around. It's also the model the GUS ecosystem makes possible—a model combining academic infrastructure, market access, in-country teams, and technological support. We've spent a decade building and refining this model through our collaboration with organizations and partners across our network. When we partner with a U.S. institution, we bring all of this experience and strategic thinking to bear.
If any of this resonates with the work your institution is doing—or the work you want to do—we'd love to speak with you at NAFSA 2026. We'll be there in Orlando, May 26–29. The conversations we find most useful are those about where the concentration risk sits, where the consistency gap is widest, what compliance maturity could unlock, and what it would look like to build toward a credible vision for the future. "Global by Design" provides a permission slip to stop defending what was inherited and start designing what comes next. That's the work we are here to do.
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