The past few years have brought intense scrutiny to international education. Governments and regulators are asking whether we are doing enough to protect students, uphold quality, and ensure fairness for both international and domestic students. These are necessary questions. But the solution will not come from regulation alone. The most effective safeguard for integrity is trust: trust that students receive impartial advice, that institutions welcome well-matched candidates, and that the sector acts in students’ long-term interests. Without trust, students hesitate, institutions lose confidence, and the system weakens. With it, the entire sector is strengthened. This is the theme at the…

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Audit currently in its planning phase as stakeholders applaud chance to prove sector’s integrity and rebuild public confidence after several years of rapid growth. Study permit caps expected to come under the review’s remit, as well as visa processing and other compliance measures. Audit comes as visa processing delays reach near-record highs, with students hailing from Africa the most likely to face lengthy waits or denials. Canada’s federal auditor general has announced an audit of Canada’s international student program after years of rapid growth and recent policy turmoil impacting international higher education.   Universities Canada welcomed the review as “an…

StudyTravel Network Source

StudyTravel Network Source

As student visa backlogs continue to plague US embassies around the world and the start of the fall semester looms, a bipartisan group of 15 lawmakers have urged the US state department to resolve issues with Indian student visas.   “As members of Congress who represent research universities, we are concerned by reports from our constituent universities about Indian students who have been unable to obtain visas to continue their education in the United States,” they urged Rubio.  Indian students, the largest group of international students in the US, contribute $9 billion annually to the US economy, added the lawmakers,…

Min, a student from Bangladesh, remembers his excitement after learning he had been accepted into a US university. It meant he would be learning from some the world’s leading medical experts in healthcare – learning skills he hopes to use to improve the healthcare system in his home country. Min, who asked not to use his name due to the enhanced US screening policies, was recently granted a visa and is due to start his freshman year this fall. The road to get there, however, was not a smooth one. Following the State Department’s three-week worldwide pause on interviews in…

With the four-week visa interview pause starting on May 27, along with SEVIS terminations, and travel bans impacting international students’ chances to study in the US, there was a near 22% drop in F-1 visa issuances in May 2025 compared to May 2024. Nearly 60% of that decline was driven by falling numbers from India and China – the US’s largest sources of international students for nearly two decades – marking what is likely the most significant drop since the Covid-19 pandemic. While in India, 6,984 F-1 visas were issued in May 2025 compared with 11,829 in May 2024, China…

“Professional bodies and universities may have different standards when using English language proficiency tests for recruitment. This is the headline finding from a 2024 study – “Benchmarking English standards across professions and professional university degrees” – an effort jointly funded by the British Council, IDP, and Cambridge University Press & Assessment.”We were really shocked by how institutions set test scores that widely deviated from test-maker recommendations, which are based on linguistic experience and evidence,” said study co-author Dr Amanda Müller of Flinders University in Australia. “We were most surprised by how different institutions varied so much in how they interpreted equivalency across…