Ins and Outs for 2026
In the spirit of the new year, and jumping on the ins and outs trend, here are my Ins and Outs for 2026.
| In | Out |
|---|---|
| Students as humans. | Students as revenue streams. |
| Transparency about cost, risk, and outcomes. Not every degree leads to permanent residency. Not every pathway pays off. | Shiny brochures with no substance. |
| Reciprocal partnerships. | Collecting MOUs like Pokemon cards. |
| Ethics in recruitment. Paying people to move 18-year-olds across borders without accountability is not “market expansion” or "internationalization." It's extraction and colonialism with invoices. | “Everyone does it” as a moral framework. |
| Immigration literacy across campus. Admissions, faculty, advisors, deans. Everyone should know the basics of status, risk, and who to call. | Treating immigration as a mysterious back-office function until something goes wrong. |
| AI that reduces administrative drag. AI doesn’t have to surveil students or punish learning. It can give staff their time back for better student advising. | AI used as a hall monitor, plagiarism cop, or replacement for human judgment and agency. |
| Student support beyond orientation week. Culture shock doesn’t care about the calendar. Neither does grief, racism, housing and food insecurity, or visa anxiety. | One-size-fits-all international student services, or worse yet, assuming all on-campus offices are interchangeable. |
| Free food at events. | Counting calories. |
| Decolonization as structural change. | Decolonization as a branding exercise. Publishing Global South research and increasing Global South partnerships while exploiting their students is not progress. |
| Intentional, organic events and activities to bring students and communities together. Free food. | Pretending enrollment growth is the same as internationalization. |
| Buying real leather. Until everyone is vegetarian, leather will exist as a byproduct of the meat industry. Not buying leather in favor of vegan leather (aka plastic) means real leather will be discarded as biohazardous waste and more plastic will be in our world. | Vegan leather. Patent leather too. |
| Not saving your nicest things for a hypothetical future. Burn the Diptyque candle. Wear the good perfume to the grocery store, especially to the grocery store. Don’t save them for later. | Hoarding joy. |
| Long walks in new cities without an agenda. | Running to locations just for Instagram content. |
| Taking a mid-day walk. If you get intermittent breaks at work, use them. | Scrolling instead of resting. |
| Students who text you updates about their lives years later. That’s the actual metric. | Alumni success measured by donations and titles. |
| Saying “I don’t know” and then actually finding out. | Bluffing expertise because admitting uncertainty feels risky. |
| Laughing in inappropriate places. | Being too serious. Life is not that serious. |
| Choosing joy with intention. Not optimism, joy. | Exhaustion as virtue. |
| Turning down opportunities that feel extractive. | Prestige invitations that cost more than they give. |