Our regular readers know our devotion to cross-cultural intersections. Today we focus your attention on the financial value of global.
At the NACUBO 2026 Annual Meeting, I spent several days listening to chief business officers talk about the problems consuming higher education: rising personnel costs, deferred maintenance, enrollment pressure, AI investments, student success vs. access, the loss of institutional knowledge as long-serving leaders retire, oh, and changing Federal policies and guidelines.
Important to note: just 13% of CBOs say their institution understands per-student program and activity costs very well as reported in Inside Higher Ed from their annual survey of CBOs. There’s an opportunity for you right there.
You know what did not come up at the conference? International enrollment.
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Find out live. Join Dr. GianMario Besana (DePaul) and Dr. Cheryl Young (Miami University) as they unpack early findings from the AIEA-Intead Internationalization Benchmarking Study.
August 27, 12:30-1:15pm EST. Have you registered yet?
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Nearly every concern being discussed at NACUBO pointed toward the need for new, sustainable revenue streams. While international enrollment cannot solve every financial challenge facing a college or university, it can become a meaningful part of the solution. And given today’s pressures, international is just as reliable as any other options for revenue-sustainability being evaluated by your leadership.
The larger point is easy to miss amid headlines about visa delays, geopolitics, and fluctuating student demand: international enrollment drives revenue. And that revenue opportunity is not well understood by your business officers. In fact, your CBO needs to hear from you, and this is important: they don’t know that they need to hear from you.
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