Stop Panicking, Start Planning: US Universities Need a TNE Reality Check - May 2026

An opinion piece Charles Cormack Chairman Cormack Consultancy Group 

Let’s not pretend otherwise: the US higher education sector is under serious pressure. 

Federal funding is being squeezed. Political hostility towards universities is no longer subtle. Research budgets are under attack, and some of the most prestigious institutions in the country have found themselves publicly targeted. At the same time, international recruitment, which is the financial safety net for much of the system, is faltering badly. New international enrolments dropped by around 17% in fall 2025, with a further 20% decline heading into spring 2026, signifying a steep structural decline. NAFSA estimates the autumn shortfall alone cost the sector roughly $1.1 billion. Some institutions are seeing far sharper falls. For example, DePaul’s new international graduate cohort dropped by nearly 62%. Indian recruitment, long a cornerstone, is becoming increasingly volatile. 

Looming behind all of this is the domestic demographic cliff. The class of 2025 was the peak. Moving forward, the number of 18-year-olds declines steadily, specifically by around 13% over the next fifteen years. Closures are already happening. More will follow. 

So yes, the pressure is real. And no, this is not the fault of individual provosts or enrolment leaders trying to manage through it. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: most US universities are responding to this moment by panicking, not planning. 

They are freezing hiring. Cutting programmes. Sending leadership teams to Washington. Lobbying for visa changes. Issuing carefully drafted statements. These actions are all understandable, even necessary, to a point. But none of it addresses the core issue. Very few institutions are seriously rethinking how, or where, they grow. 

Instead, the dominant strategy still seems to be: wait for international students to come back. The problem is they won’t. At least not at the scale the sector has built its financial model around. 

Even before the current political climate, the US was losing share in the global student market to the UK, Canada, Australia, and increasingly to emerging regional hubs across Asia and the Middle East. Recent events haven’t created that problem; they’ve accelerated it. This is evidence of a structural redistribution of global demand, not a temporary decrease that many are hoping for. 

Waiting for a return to 2019 is not strategy. It’s wishful thinking. And this is where the rest of the world is already moving ahead. 

Take the UK. In 2024/25, nearly 670,000 students were studying for UK degrees outside the UK through transnational education (TNE). That number has grown rapidly and now almost matches the number of international students physically on UK campuses. Within a year or two, it will likely overtake it. This didn’t happen by accident. It was built deliberately, over two decades. 

Today, UK universities operate across 200+ countries through branch campuses, dual and joint degrees, validated partnerships, and franchised provision. They have diversified not just where their students come from, but where their teaching actually happens. TNE has become a parallel system: revenue stream, brand amplifier, recruitment pipeline, and geopolitical hedge all in one. 

Crucially, they built this in response to exactly the pressures US institutions are now facing: visa restrictions, political scrutiny, domestic demographic decline, and over-reliance on a single model of internationalisation. In other words, they adapted. Meanwhile, most US institutions are still sitting on the sidelines. 

There are exceptions—NYU, Webster, a small handful of others—but they prove the rule. As a sector, American higher education continues to behave as though the world will come to it. That assumption no longer holds. And clinging to it is becoming dangerous. 

Yes, transnational education is complex. It requires investment, credible partners, regulatory navigation, and long-term commitment from leadership. It is not a quick fix. 

But neither is the alternative—shrinking your way to sustainability while hoping external conditions improve. 

US universities have one of the strongest global brands in higher education. And the demand for US degrees still exists; it just doesn’t necessarily translate into students crossing borders in the same way it once did. Other countries have recognised this and moved their provision to meet demand where it is. The US, largely, has not. 

So the real question for university leaders is this: Are you using this moment to fundamentally rethink your global strategy, or are you simply retrenching and hoping the storm passes? Because right now, far too many institutions are choosing the latter. 

Hope is not a strategy. 
Lobbying is not a strategy. 
Cost-cutting is not a strategy. 

They are defensive moves in a game that now requires something very different. 

If US universities want to remain globally relevant and financially viable, they need to stop waiting for students to come back and start going to where those students are. The world hasn’t stopped demanding higher education. But it has moved on from assuming it needs to come to you. 

It’s time to catch up.