The session, held at the InUni Global Convocation in central London last week, brought together voices from the US and UK to examine how institutions can protect opportunity for students while operating within increasingly constrained regulatory environments.
Kasia Krupka, associate director – UK partnerships & compliance at InUni Global, warned that the tightening of rules across major study destinations is both synchronised and systemic.
Looking accross stricter immigration controls in the UK, the US, Australia and Canada, “they’re all in the same boat and all points are going in the same direction”, she said.
“I don’t think it’s a cycle we can simply wait out,” she warned.
Her central question to the sector was blunt:
For Krupka, the answer lies in deeper knowledge of students – their intent, motivations and understanding of their chosen course – and in evidence‑based diversification rather than chasing headcount.
She pointed to the UK’s renewed – and tighter – Basic Compliance Assessment (BCA) metrics as an example: while one strand focuses on visas, the others focus on completion and outcomes.
“Those questions need to be asked a lot earlier than at the end of the journey,” she argued. “They need to be asked before the application comes into the funnel – through your partners, through your recruitment partners – to really understand the student that you’re recruiting.”
From a US perspective, Reitumetse Obakeng Mabokela, vice provost for global engagement at the University of Rochester, urged institutions to think about partnerships rather than mobility, especially in politically hostile or unpredictable environments.
She acknowledged the difficulty of convincing global partners that US institutions remain committed to international engagement.
“All you have to do is look at the news on any given day and say we’re not so sure about you,” she noted, adding that inhospitable immigration policies are a real constraint for US universities.
Yet she argued that this makes the quality of partnerships even more important. “If my colleague and my favorite partner in another university come together, we do some fabulous things, and then we each leave, then the relationship dies,” she pointed out.
Sometimes some partners are created more equal than others
Reitumetse Obakeng Mabokela, University of Rochester
She called on the sector to confront power and resource differentials in global collaboration. “Sometimes some partners are created more equal than others,” she said. “If we’re being truly collaborative partners, we have to engage that elephant in the room.”
From Teesside University, director of international development George Hunt stressed that in a world of tightening rules and rising scepticism about the value of university, student benefit must be the test for any international model – from TNE and articulation to joint degrees and credit mobility.
“Any partnership, any arrangement that a university has anywhere in the world, I think loses value very quickly if it isn’t valid for the student,” he said.
Sanjay Ramdath, vice president for enrolment management at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, framed his institution’s mission starkly.
“We take all students as they are. It’s our job to uplift them into where they want to be.”
He stressed that for many families, the key question is value and return on investment:
“What makes your degree from X school different than the degree from Y school? Because at the end, I need to know that that degree allows me to go in and get an interview, not a job… Can I even just walk in and get an interview?”