In Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States – all federal systems where power is divided between a central government and regional or local governments – the central government makes and enforces immigration laws, including those affecting international students. This sometimes creates an issue: central government-initiated policies can affect regions, cities, and towns in ways the government may not have intended.

For example, policies aimed at reducing international student numbers often have a visceral effect in places where a single sector makes up the lion’s share of jobs and income, or where a particular skills shortage is extreme. Being able to hire international students is often integral to economic and social health in those communities.

But media headlines tend to focus on the broad strokes of a policy rather than the diverse impacts it can have on people, places, and jobs. In a context where Big Four governments are making it increasingly difficult for international students to obtain study visas, there is an opportunity for business and higher education groups to change the headlines. To do so, they need to think about storytelling.

Start with honesty

One stat is almost always trotted out when talking about the international education sector: the economic value of the industry to the national economy. This is important, but it has its limits. Look at the following sentence as if you weren’t working in this sector, and see if you have a reaction:

“In 2024/25, the international education sector contributed AU$53.6 billion to the national economy.”

That’s a hefty sum, but most people have no context for understanding it, nor much to do except noting that it is impressive.

Then there’s this kind of general quote we see all the time in industry and government press releases:

“We welcome international students and value their contribution to our universities, to our communities and to our country.”

If your heart rate didn’t speed up after reading that, you wouldn’t be alone.

The art of storytelling

Chip and Dan Heath’s bestselling book Made to Stick is an iconic bible for anyone involved in content creation and marketing. First published in 2007, it is as relevant now as it ever has been. The Heath Brothers came up with an acronym, “Succes,” to help readers remember six core principles of making a concept memorable:

• Simple: Find the core of your idea. Strip away fluff and prioritize the single most important message.
• Unexpected: Grab attention by breaking a pattern. Keep people engaged by opening "curiosity gaps" and posing questions that need answers.
• Concrete: Use sensory details, clear images, and everyday language instead of vague abstractions.
• Credible: Give people a reason to believe your idea. Use vivid details, testable credentials, or relatable personal experiences.
• Emotional: Make people care. Appeal to identity, self-interest, or feelings for an individual rather than dry statistics.
• Stories: Tell a narrative. Stories act as a mental flight simulator, inspiring and guiding people on how to act.

Thinking of Succes, we can look at a couple of stories about international education that do pack a punch.

Think local

In 2025, the UK-based Centre for Cities thinktank conducted a major study called “Town and gown: The role of universities in city economies.” The study, whose context was the financial strain of many UK universities and the associated role of policy, found that local universities account for a huge proportion of high-skilled knowledge jobs in relatively disadvantaged urban areas such as Stoke (31%), Hull (24%), and Sunderland (18%).

Reading those statistics, you think about jobs and opportunities. If you are a young person in a small town in the UK with a university in it, you think about what might happen to your job prospects if the university had to shut down. And if you are a government policy maker, you think about the electorate in regions you most need to win in the next election.

The Town and Gown study meets Succes criteria in many ways, including the “U” for “Unexpected”: “Grab attention by breaking a pattern. Keep people engaged by opening "curiosity gaps" and posing questions that need answers.”

Centre for Cities’ storytelling made it all the way to .

A cap is just a cap until it isn’t

In 2025, Canada’s cap on new study permits (now in its third year) tanked study visa grants far more than it was intended to. It was expressly designed to spare specific provinces from reductions. It didn't. In the chart below, the grey line represents the forecast of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) for 2024 in terms of the number of study permit approvals, and the red line is what actually happened.

If you are someone who is working in international education or immigration, the story of lower-than-forecast study permit approvals might well grab your attention. Otherwise, it probably wouldn’t … unless there was another angle.

In 2025, the warned the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration (CIMM) that the cap would impact Canadians’ access to healthcare:

“Certain locations [in Atlantic Canada] rely on international student nursing graduates to fill shortages in local health care institutions. This is particularly true of programs that operate in linguistic-minority contexts and rely on international students to meet the increasingly diverse health industry and population needs. Current reforms are therefore significantly affecting provinces’ health human resources needs and increasing the vulnerability of precarious, yet essential, nursing programs. In the short term, the decisions affect the viability of programs (such as through program closures, layoffs, hiring freezes). In the long term, they affect the academic institution’s capacity to address the increasing needs of a diverse population.”

Not everyone can understand the nuances of Canada’s international student cap, but everyone sure can imagine the nightmare of not being able to receive healthcare because there just aren’t enough staff. The submission meets the Heath Brothers’ “E” for “emotional” test: “Make people care. Appeal to identity, self-interest, or feelings for an individual rather than dry statistics.”

Sector advocates access their superpowers

At the 2026 NAFSA Conference in Orlando, IDP’s director of marketing for the US, Elle Butler, led a session called “Activate Your Advocacy Superpowers,” which was related to a campaign spearheaded by the US for Success Coalition. The campaign aims to replace myths about international students’ impact on American jobs with facts about their economic contributions. If you , you’ll see that it goes far beyond a stat about the economic value of the sector.

The following is a screengrab of a slide from the presentation deck. The Heath Brothers would be proud.

For additional background, please see:

• “What is holding back brand strategy in higher education marketing?”