The future looks very bleak for many small and medium-sized colleges and universities in the U.S. Amid all the gloom and doom, though, there is one strategic opportunity for small to medium-sized universities: incorporating carefully designed international student recruitment into the overall recruitment plan for the next five to seven years.

All signs indicate that high school graduation rates will continue to drop due to low birth rates, leading to a potential higher education meltdown that is likely to affect all academic institutions, big and small, in the years after 2024. Higher education is facing a new and potentially grave obstacle. For several decades, there have been plenty…