September has been a busy month for the international education sector, with events including the ICEF Monitor Global Summit, SAMS Global, PIEoneers, and Westminster Higher Education Forum on the Future of International Student Recruitment.

The Immigration White Paper, the impact of AI, and the rising popularity of Asia as an international student hub were common themes across many sessions. What’s clear is that while technology, policy, and global competition are reshaping the sector, the fundamentals remain the same: institutions must focus on finding the right students, delivering value, and ensuring long-term success for learners and societies.

With institutions needing to manage costs carefully and tightening BCA metrics, strategy and focus matter more than ever. At WHEF, Vincenzo Raimo highlighted that for some universities, the net income from international students can be less than the £9k domestic student fees.

Recruitment strategies must identify and nurture students who are the right fit – those best placed to succeed and complete their studies. There is value in partnering with schools and school groups where you can reach cohorts directly and understand their student base. At ICEF, one standout statistic was that “78% of schools offer more than one curriculum – do you have equivalencies for all of them?” Institutions that ensure admissions requirements reflect qualifications, readiness, and student support needs will be best placed to succeed.

Every session called for better use of data – not because of scarcity, but because of the need for clarity and strategy.

That’s why enrolment intent data is so valuable. Enroly’s tracking of deposits and deposit-to-CAS conversion is exciting in this regard: every new partner adds richer, trusted data for the sector. In parallel, Ecctis’s recognition expertise helps institutions set clear and credible admissions standards, ensuring data insights feed into robust decision-making

AI and automation are reshaping recruitment and admissions, but the message from ICEF was clear: students want to feel recruited, not processed. Speed alone is not everything. In fact, ICEF found that rushing out offers can reduce conversion — with about a week often being the “sweet spot.”

Institutions adopting AI must remember that technology can enhance efficiency, but it cannot replace genuine human connection. With resources stretched, AI can still play an important role by freeing up staff time. Research by Edified showed many universities fail to follow up enquiries properly, or do so without warmth or personalisation. The right systems can enable teams to deliver a better student experience while boosting conversion

The sector’s reputation is collective. As Diana Beech noted, policy frameworks and compliance apply across the board, and failures in one part of the system can impact the whole. Collaboration and insight-sharing are essential to ensure the UK remains competitive.

On compliance, Nick Cuthbert of The PIE argued that “the UK sector should pick a platform and go with it, as there will be many benefits in the future to a bigger data lake.” A shared, sector-level approach to systems and standards could strengthen both competitiveness and credibility.

Competition for international students is intensifying, with talk shifting from the “Big 4” to the “Big 14.” Asian institutions are rising rapidly in global rankings, and the growth of TNE means students can access high-quality education closer to home. The UK sector must demonstrate the ROI of a UK degree more clearly.

This links closely to concerns in the May Immigration White Paper about graduates entering low-paid or unskilled jobs. Focusing on employability, alumni engagement, and community links will be critical to both strengthening the student value proposition and reshaping the political narrative.

For Ecctis, these discussions reinforce our mission: helping governments, institutions, and employers recognise and trust qualifications, so that international education continues to demonstrate its value clearly and credibly.

We will continue to support our partners in navigating these challenges, drawing on nearly 30 years of expertise in comparability and recognition. Together with innovators such as Enroly, we are not only supporting the sector today but also helping to shape the future of trusted, transformative international education.

Recently, the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT Study Mode and Google Gemini’s Guided Learning mode marked another leap forward in educational technology. But these are not just productivity upgrades; they are, in effect, new voices in the classroom. Voices that are now guiding students on how to think, how to study, and how to solve problems.

Both companies assure us their AI models have been “specially trained” for learning. They promise more personalised support, more adaptive feedback. Yet, neither has explained what pedagogical approach sits behind their algorithms, what methodology shapes their responses, or whose definition of “learning” is being embedded in the code. And that should give educators pause.

Because if we’re not careful, we risk letting AI companies, not teachers, not schools, not universities, define how learning happens.

For many institutions, the journey with technology has been about two stages:

First came digitisation — converting analogue materials into digital form. Printed textbooks became e-books, lesson notes were stored in shared drives, and archival resources were scanned so they could be accessed online.

Then came digitalisation — taking those digital resources and using them to streamline old processes. We shifted from paper attendance sheets to online registers, from in-class lectures to video conferencing platforms.

These steps were important, even necessary. But they didn’t fundamentally change how education worked. The pedagogy, the power structures and the student experience remained largely the same.

Digital transformation is not about adding new tools to old systems — it’s about reimagining how education should work in a world that is constantly changing. It means asking fundamental questions: What skills will matter in five to ten years? How should teaching adapt to students who are growing up with AI assistants in their pockets? How can curricula reflect both timeless human values and the realities of a digital-first society?

This is a strategic and cultural shift, not just a technological one. It involves redesigning education from the ground up to be agile, learner-centred, and responsive to changes in the wider world, including the rapid evolution of AI. It calls for assessment models that measure not just memorisation but problem-solving and creativity, for learning environments that blend human expertise with intelligent systems, and for governance structures that can adapt as quickly as the technology itself.

True transformation empowers educators to experiment with AI-powered assessment, create personalised learning pathways, and embed real-time feedback into every stage of the learning journey. And critically, it gives institutions the ability and the authority to decide how these tools are used, rather than simply inheriting the defaults of commercial providers.

Without this transformation, educators will lack the AI literacy they urgently need in two areas:

If that literacy gap remains, companies like OpenAI and Google (through tools like Study Mode and Guided Learning) will quietly become the de facto curriculum designers. Every time a student asks a question, they’re being nudged toward a particular way of learning, one chosen not by their school but by an opaque model trained on undisclosed data and assumptions.

This moment presents a unique opportunity for leadership in education. By placing digital transformation on the strategic agenda, institutions can ensure their educators, and not external algorithms, remain the guiding influence in student learning.

Transformation doesn’t mean replacing teachers; it means empowering them with the tools, skills, and understanding to shape AI use in ways that align with their mission. It means creating space for experimentation, investing in training, and fostering partnerships that bring transparency and pedagogical intent to technology.

When approached this way, digital transformation is not simply a response to AI – it becomes a proactive step in ensuring technology serves the deepest purposes of education.

We are at a moment of choice. AI in learning is here, and it is evolving quickly. The question is whether education will adapt its systems and culture to work alongside it or allow the design of learning itself to drift quietly into the hands of closed, commercial models.

By acting now, we can make sure the voices shaping students’ learning journeys still speak with the values, insights, and vision of educators.

Generative AI is challenging traditional approaches in international education, raising questions and creating opportunities around how we interact with students, streamline processes, and provide personalised support. At ECCTIS, this transformation intersects directly with our mission to support the recognition and comparability of qualifications and skills worldwide. From credential evaluation to global benchmarking, AI tools, when expertly prompted, can enhance how we deliver insights, streamline workflows, and support learners and institutions across borders. Yet, amidst these technological possibilities, an important reality remains: the true potential and value of these innovations ultimately depend on the skills and judgement of subject matter experts.

At the core of this human-driven advantage is “prompting,” a skill that, despite recent hype, has long been fundamental to effective communication, critical thinking, and creative problem-solving. Far from a novel technical trick, prompting represents a refined form of the timeless practice of clearly and effectively articulating questions and instructions. It’s the modern iteration of foundational skills such as clarity, context-awareness, and nuanced judgement.

Although the term ‘prompt engineering’ has become widespread in academic and technical circles, it frequently conflates two related but distinct practices. At one end of the spectrum, prompt engineering involves specialised skills like fine-tuning model parameters, incorporating domain-specific datasets, or modifying architectural elements to enhance a Large Language Model’s (LLM) overall performance. In contrast, ‘prompting’ occurs at the user level and requires no advanced programming expertise. Prompting relies purely on crafting succinct, context-rich instructions or commands designed to elicit desired outputs from AI models.

In practical terms, prompting involves guiding AI models clearly and contextually to produce precise, relevant responses. Consider international recruitment: an ambiguous prompt like “Create a marketing message for international students” will yield generic, culturally insensitive results. However, a detailed, thoughtful prompt such as “Draft a culturally sensitive, engaging social media post targeting prospective STEM postgraduate students from Indonesia, highlighting our scholarships and alumni success stories” leverages the AI’s full potential.

Prompting demands deep domain knowledge, cultural insight, and strategic thinking—qualities inherent to education professionals, not AI tools. Through expert prompting, humans provide the essential context and subtlety that machines inherently lack.

Internationalised education institutions face unique challenges, from navigating cross-border compliance and diverse cultural norms to maintaining equitable admissions processes. Poorly instructed AI risks amplifying biases, misrepresenting regulations, or creating communication blunders. Conversely, expertly prompted AI can:

To leverage AI effectively, international education professionals must refine their prompting skills. Here are five habits of expert prompters:

The true potential of prompting emerges when institutions embed this skill into their professional culture:

Incorporating prompting expertise into professional development, recognizing prompt champions, and fostering cross-team collaboration positions institutions to harness AI strategically and ethically.

As AI evolves, the role of educators and subject-matter experts becomes increasingly crucial. AI excels at identifying patterns but falls short in interpreting context or navigating intercultural nuances. Prompting bridges this gap, aligning human expertise with AI’s computational power.

So, rather than simply adopting AI, education professionals should focus on mastering prompting as a foundational skill:

Ultimately, the most impactful AI innovation is not found in the latest technological update but in the quality of the questions and instructions provided by human experts. By mastering the art of prompting, international education professionals ensure they thrive and lead ethically, strategically, and effectively in an increasingly AI-driven world.