The project, Examining Success Factors in Internationalisation, was jointly first launched by the Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA) and Intead in March 2025.
It examines institutions’ international enrolment strategies, study abroad programs, partnership structures and organisational capacity, aiming to equip leaders with data to improve university strategies and advocate for resources within their universities.
“Institutions continue to face myriad challenges externally and internally: from budget cuts and an increased scrutiny on global operations to visa challenges and wars. This is unfortunately the new normal,” said AIEA CEO Clare Overmann.
“A foundational first step is to assess your own institutional capacity to understand what levers of change are possible today and where you need to be when the next big challenge strikes,” she advised institutions.
Upon launching the survey, Intead and AIEA aimed to attract 100 participating institutions. Currently, data intake has started at 22 confirmed institutions, with an additional 40 securing internal approval from leadership.
“We have seen strong interest across institutional types, with particular momentum among public institutions including R1s and regional publics, as well as community college networks,” commented Intead CEO Ben Waxman.
While some private institutions have signed up, Waxman expected momentum to grow among this group as the study gains visibility. “The diversity of participation is one of the things that makes the benchmarking most valuable,” he added.
Oklahoma State University (OSU), an R1 research institution, was the first to sign up to the study – with participation spearheaded by associate provost and dean of OSU Global, Randy Kluver.
Kluver said he hoped the study’s findings would help him evaluate whether OSU’s international teams are optimally organised with the right staffing levels after two major reorganisations in his time at the university.
“Anytime you can get an outsider to spend time looking at your organisation is valuable,” he said, highlighting wide differences in the way US institutions are structured.
At OSU, less than five percent of the student body comes from overseas, with the international student population having slowly declined for more than a decade.
While sector-wide new international enrolments fell by 17% last year, Kluver said they were “more or less even” at OSU, where the international population skews to the graduate level and undergraduates are overwhelmingly dual degree students from China.
But Kluver anticipated “more trouble” in 2026/27, with international applications down and fears about visa challenges disrupting the earlier Fall enrolments of the Midwestern states, typically starting in mid-August.
All of a sudden, that fire hose of enrolment coming from India became a trickle
Gian Mario Besana, DePaul University
Few institutions have been shielded from the policy volatility and visa disruptions of President Trump’s second term, with nearly six in 10 colleges reporting a drop in international applications for the coming year, driven by a sharp decline in Indian students.
Going forward, Kluver said he hoped to work towards a more integrated recruitment strategy, deepening ties with high-quality agents and using in-country reps in South and Southeast Asia to diversify source markets.
After several months of uncertainty, he welcomed the renewal of three “highly productive partnerships” with Chinese institutions offering dual degrees – a model he hopes to replicate with institutions in less “geopolitically threatened” regions.
Gian Mario Besana, associate provost for global engagement and online learning at DePaul University – a private institution – said enrolment declines and budgetary pressures had reshaped the international recruitment team at DePaul.
“Our international student population had spiked significantly in 2023/24, then shrunk equally significantly in the last two years.” It now comprises roughly 2,700 students including OPT participants, with India, China and Pakistan the largest source countries.
“International enrolment, particularly at the graduate level, was considered a serious contributor to revenue generation for the university,” said Besana: “All of a sudden, that fire hose of enrolment coming from India became a trickle.”
While describing Trump’s near month-long visa pause ad “deadly”, he said the drop was down to a combination of factors, including a “profound attitude shift” of Indian families’ perceptions of studying in the US.
Faced with falling enrolments and wider budgetary issues, Besana’s team had less resources and started thinking strategically about diversification, focussing on Central Asia where Besana said they’d seen “significant activity” with undergraduate students from Kyrgyzstan.
He said the study would equip him with important potential tools to advocate for resources from his institution. “Instead of always making an internal argument, I will be able to make a much more articulate and cogent argument having benchmarking data”.
What’s more, he urged universities to think beyond international student enrolment, highlighting that the study also covers study abroad teams, internationalisation curriculums, COIL and virtual exchange, among other aspects.
“I’m a little concerned that it will continue to feed the narrative that internationalisation is only about the money and is only about the international student enrolment, which is partially true, but that’s not all of it.”
At DePaul, roughly three quarters of students go abroad on faculty-led programs up to three weeks long which Besana said was atypical and largely due to DePaul being a Catholic urban college with lots of first-generation college students unable to have long periods away from work and family responsibilities.
“But we realise the importance of study abroad which impacts retention and time to graduation, and people who study abroad are more engaged … So we’re looking at this strategically as part of the overall experience,” said Besana.
