Leadership Insights · AIEA 2026 Annual Conference

We Asked International Education Leaders One Question at AIEA 2026

Presented by Via in partnership with AIEA

At the AIEA 2026 Annual Conference, we set up a camera, a backdrop, and one question:

What does international education need to get right in the next two years?

No prep. No talking points. Just international education leaders, on the record, telling us what they'd bet the next two years on. We called it the Leadership Insight Studio, and what came out of it is some of the most honest strategic thinking we've heard in this field.

Watch it here:

Nobody said "wait and see"

That's the first thing you'll notice. Not one leader suggested riding it out until the old model comes back.

"The biggest decision international educators need to get right is to not shrink from the challenges we're facing today."

"There's no such thing as a magic reset in this time of change. And there shouldn't be, because we can always do better."

"We don't have time to guess. We don't have time to make mistakes."

That urgency showed up in every answer, whether the leader ran a study abroad office, a global partnerships portfolio, or an entire university.

Three things kept coming up

Data.
"Data, data, data. Data is so important because it's telling us where our students are at." Leaders aren't asking for more dashboards for their own sake. They're asking for evidence that tells them where to invest and what to stop doing.

AI, on the field's own terms.
"How do we redefine and reimagine our work through AI? Not a tool, but a system." The conversation has moved past whether to use AI. The question now is who shapes how it gets used.

Students at the center.
From reciprocal, equitable engagement to well-being "at the center of everything they do," leaders were clear that strategy means nothing if students can't thrive inside it.

And underneath all of it, one leader put the real challenge plainly: "We have to decide what our value proposition is and lean into that really hard."

The video is the spark. The report is the fire.

We didn't stop at the camera. We paired the studio interviews with an anonymous Leadership Pulse Poll of international education leaders, and the combined picture is sharper than anything one interview could give you.

The full report, The Next Two Years Are a Strategy Window, distills everything into six strategic priorities for the next two years, along with the one number that surprised us most: how confident leaders actually are that their institution can pull this off. (Spoiler: there's a gap, and it's the most useful finding in the report.)

If you lead international education at your institution, this is your agenda-setting document for the next two years.