What Can We Do About the Growing Chaos in Supporting International Student Success?
Success?
With the current chaos we are in, perhaps we should just focus on avoiding risks and preventing issues.
Success can seem a little too far away to reach right now, isn’t it?
I recently listened to a NAFSA conversation, Elimination of D/S: Special Issues for Quarter System Schools, where international student services leaders from Portland State University, the University of Denver, and UC Santa Barbara discussed how they are preparing for the elimination of Duration of Status (D/S).
What stayed with me wasn’t just the technical discussion about new processes, timelines, and implementation challenges.
It was the honesty.
Beneath the regulatory questions, I heard something much bigger: concern about students, pressure on advisors, uncertainty for institutions, and a growing recognition that the old model of supporting international students may no longer be enough.
The conversation made me think about a much bigger question:
What can we do about the growing chaos in supporting international student success?
Because the chaos is real. And it looks different depending on where you sit.
For Institutions: How Do We Build a System That Can Handle This?
For institutions, the challenge goes far beyond understanding a new regulation.
International student services offices are trying to figure out how to operationalize significant changes while many questions and scenarios continue to evolve.
They are thinking about:
- New processes and workflows
- Communication strategies
- Student records and data
- Technology and systems
- Academic calendars
- Travel
- OPT timelines
- Extension processes
- Institutional risk
- Coordination across multiple offices
And for quarter-system institutions, the compressed academic calendar creates another layer of complexity.
The challenge is no longer simply:
Do we understand the rule?
The bigger question is:
How does an entire institution operationalize it?
That requires coordination between International Student and Scholar Services, academic departments, registrars, IT teams, Career Services, leadership, and many others.
And that leads to one of the biggest challenges I see:
International student success is becoming increasingly interconnected, while our institutional systems often remain disconnected.
For Advisors: How Can We Possibly Catch Everything?
One speaker shared a sentiment that I think many international student advisors will recognize:
“We’ve been able to sometimes wave our magic wand and help them as needed. But the stakes are so much higher.”
That statement stayed with me.
For years, international student advisors have often been the people students turn to when something goes wrong.
- A student misses something.
- A deadline is approaching.
- A situation becomes complicated.
And the student thinks:
“I’ll go to ISSS. They’ll help me figure it out.”
And often, through extraordinary expertise, experience, and effort, advisors have found ways to help.
But what happens when the stakes get higher?
What happens when there are more situations that cannot simply be fixed later?
The speaker continued with another important observation:
“It goes back to empowering students to be aware of everything.”
This represents a significant shift.
International student advisors can provide guidance. They can communicate. They can send reminders. They can offer exceptional customer service.
But they cannot monitor every student’s life, every decision, every deadline, and every potential risk.
And perhaps they shouldn’t be expected to.
The pressure on advisors is growing because they are being asked to manage increasingly complex situations while also navigating uncertainty themselves.
They are expected to provide answers.
But sometimes, the honest answer is:
We don’t know yet.
That requires a different kind of professional capacity—not just technical expertise, but communication, change management, and the ability to support students through uncertainty.
But it also raises a larger institutional question: Are our universities organized to respond to challenges that increasingly cross departmental boundaries?
As I explored in my previous article, Higher Education Can’t Solve Tomorrow’s Challenges with Yesterday’s Organizational Structures, today’s challenges rarely fit neatly within one office. Supporting students through uncertainty requires not only capable professionals, but stronger institutional alignment and collaboration across the people and functions that shape the student experience.
For Students: How Am I Supposed to Know All of This?
Perhaps one of the most important parts of the NAFSA conversation was the growing concern about students’ ability to manage increasingly complicated responsibilities.
One speaker shared:
“A lot more students… are having a harder time finding post-graduate employment opportunities.”
As a result, students are delaying their OPT applications until later in their final term—or even into their grace period.
And that is becoming increasingly problematic.
This immediately caught my attention because it demonstrates something we need to talk about more openly:
Career readiness and immigration readiness are interconnected.
A student struggles to find employment.
They delay making career decisions.
They delay applying for OPT.
And suddenly, what began as a career challenge can create immigration consequences.
The student doesn’t experience these challenges as separate departmental issues.
They don’t wake up thinking:
“Today I have a Career Services problem.”
And tomorrow:
“Today I have an ISSS problem.”
They are simply trying to navigate their lives.
They are trying to answer questions such as:
- What should I do after graduation?
- Should I apply for OPT now?
- What happens if I don’t have a job yet?
- Should I travel?
- Can I change my academic plans?
- What happens if my graduation date changes?
But one decision can affect another.
And often, students may not realize those connections until it is too late.
“You Never Told Me.”
Another speaker raised a concern that many institutions already hear from students:
“You never told me.”
The speaker emphasized that reminders and messaging are there to help students—but institutions cannot be expected to individually monitor every aspect of every student’s immigration status.
The message was clear:
It’s your status. It’s your responsibility. We’re here to help. But we can’t do everything for you.
This is an important—and sometimes uncomfortable—shift.
The answer cannot simply be:
Send more emails.
Because the problem isn’t always that students didn’t receive information.
Sometimes:
- They didn’t understand why it mattered.
- They didn’t realize the information applied to them.
- They didn’t understand the consequences of waiting.
- They didn’t know what question to ask.
- They assumed someone would contact them personally.
- They didn’t know when they needed to take action.
This is not simply an information problem.
It is a navigation problem.
Students need more than information.
They need the ability to understand their responsibilities, recognize when something may affect them, and know when and where to ask for help.
For Campus Partners: “I Didn’t Know This Affected International Students.”
And this brings us to another critical stakeholder group: the people across campus who support international students every day.
- Academic advisors.
- Career coaches.
- Faculty.
- Student support professionals.
- Administrators.
- Registrars.
- Graduate program staff.
None of these professionals need to become immigration advisors.
That is not the goal.
But they do need to understand when something might matter.
- An academic advisor may be discussing a change in a student’s academic plan.
- A career coach may be talking about post-graduation employment.
- A faculty member may be discussing delayed graduation.
- A program administrator may be helping a student change programs.
These decisions and conversations may have implications that the campus partner does not immediately see.
And that is the gap.
Campus partners don’t need to know everything.
But they need to know:
- What might matter.
- What questions to ask.
- And when to connect the student with the right expertise.
The Student Is Often the Only Person Seeing the Whole Picture
This may be one of the biggest challenges facing international students today.
- ISSS sees immigration.
- Career Services sees employment.
- Academic Advising sees the academic journey.
- Faculty see academic performance.
- The Registrar sees enrollment.
Each office sees one part of the student’s experience.
But the international student is living all of it at the same time.
And too often, they are expected to connect the dots themselves.
That becomes increasingly difficult when the environment is complicated, the rules are changing, the job market is challenging, and the consequences of missing something can be significant.
The student is often standing at the intersection of systems that don’t always talk to each other.
So perhaps the question should not simply be:
How do we give international students more information?
Perhaps we should ask:
How do we build better navigation systems around them?
So, What Can We Do About the Chaos?
I don’t believe the answer is another office.
And I don’t believe the answer is expecting ISSS to work harder, send more reminders, or somehow catch every problem before it happens.
The answer requires a different model.
Shared Responsibility.
1. Empower Students Without Abandoning Them
Empowerment does not mean giving students a long list of rules and saying:
“Good luck.”
It means helping them understand:
- What they are responsible for
- Why certain information matters
- What dates and decisions require attention
- What changes may have consequences
- When they need to take action
- When they should ask for help
We should not scare students.
But we also should not protect them from understanding the reality of the world they are navigating.
As one speaker said, students need to understand the gravity of the situation.
That means treating them as capable adults while giving them the tools and support to become better navigators of their own journey.
2. Build a Network of Informed Campus Advocates
International Student and Scholar Services professionals should remain the experts in immigration advising.
But international student success cannot depend on ISSS being:
- The only office that understands international students
- The only office students trust
- The only office sending reminders
- The only office identifying risks
- The only safety net when something goes wrong
We need more informed campus partners.
Not immigration experts.
Advocates.
People who understand enough to recognize when something may affect an international student—and know how to connect that student with the appropriate expertise.
That is how we begin moving from isolated support toward a campus-wide ecosystem.
3. Help People Become Better Navigators—Not Just Better Informed
Information alone is no longer enough.
Students can receive emails and still not understand what action they need to take.
Campus partners can attend training and still not recognize when something applies to a particular student.
The goal should not simply be:
More information.
The goal should be:
Better navigation.
We need to help students and campus partners develop the ability to:
- Recognize potential risks
- Understand connections between decisions
- Ask better questions
- Know when to pause
- Know when to seek expertise
- Take action before a situation becomes a crisis
From Protection to Empowerment.
From Silos to Shared Responsibility.
The elimination of Duration of Status may feel like chaos.
And in many ways, it is.
But perhaps the bigger lesson is not about one immigration regulation.
Perhaps it is exposing a model that has been under increasing pressure for years.
We have expected ISSS offices to protect students from every possible risk.
We have expected students to navigate increasingly complicated systems they may not fully understand.
And we have allowed other campus offices to remain disconnected from decisions that can profoundly affect an international student’s journey.
The stakes are getting higher.
The question is whether our support systems will evolve with them.
Because avoiding risks and preventing problems cannot be our ultimate definition of international student success.
It may be where we begin. But it cannot be where we stop.
The future of international student support requires something bigger:
- Empowered students who understand and take ownership of their journeys.
- Informed campus partners who recognize when their guidance matters.
- Connected institutions that stop expecting one office to carry the entire responsibility.
- Expert ISSS professionals who can focus their expertise where it is needed most.
This is the kind of ecosystem we need to build.
Because international student success can no longer depend on one office knowing everything, catching everything, and fixing everything.
It requires shared responsibility.
And perhaps that is the question we should all be asking now:
What can we do—together—to turn this growing chaos into a stronger system of support for international students?
Author
Kwan Segal is the Founder and CEO of ICAway and creator of Internationalization, Coaching, Empowerment, and Practicality (iCEP), an institutional alignment framework that combines professional development, facilitation, and cross-functional collaboration to help colleges and universities strengthen support for international student career success across existing campus functions.
Inspired by reflections from NAFSA’s August 27, 2026 collegial conversation, “Elimination of D/S: Special Issues for Quarter System Schools,” featuring international student services leaders from Portland State University, the University of Denver, and UC Santa Barbara. The reflections and interpretations in this article are my own.
