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The State of AI in International Education census, for anyone writing about it. What it is, how it was run, what you may quote, and who to ask.
Last updated 11 September 2026
What it is
A census of the people who work in international education — education agencies and counsellors, universities and colleges, language schools and pathway providers, associations and the companies serving them — on what they actually do with AI. Forty questions, four sections, about ten minutes, fielded in English, Portuguese and Spanish.
It is run by The Brief: International Education Edition, a five-minute podcast for this industry, published by Qualy. NexPay sponsors it. Neither the sponsor nor any partner sees a response before publication, has any say in the questions or the analysis, or gets the findings early.
It is the first measurement of this industry’s AI use taken from practitioners rather than from a vendor’s customer list — including the question nobody has asked at scale: whether the AI is connected to anything, and whether it acts without a human approving each action.
The facts you need in a paragraph
| Run by | The Brief: International Education Edition (Qualy) |
| Sponsor | NexPay — funding only, no editorial involvement |
| Field dates | 2026 |
| Languages | English, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish |
| Sample | Self-selected practitioners. Not a probability sample — no margin of error is quoted, and none should be attributed to it |
| Minimum published cut | Ten responses. Nothing smaller is published anywhere, including a partner’s cut of its own members |
| Weighting | None. Figures are unweighted and reported at their own base |
| Headline scalar | The Brief AI Adoption Index, 0–100, formula frozen before fielding |
The full method — who was asked, how responses were checked, what was excluded and why — is at the methodology page, and it was published before fielding began so the rules could not be chosen to suit the answers.
Quoting a figure
Every headline figure has its own page carrying the number, the base, the question exactly as it was asked and the full distribution behind it. Those pages are the citable version: the numbers.
Cite it as:
State of AI in International Education 2026, The Brief (n=…).
Please carry the base. A percentage without the number of people behind it is not a finding, and this sample cannot support one. Please also avoid writing that a figure represents “the industry” — it represents the people who answered, which is a real and useful thing and not the same thing.
The same figures are available as a machine-readable fact sheet if that is easier than reading them off a page.
Early access and embargo
Nothing is published while the census is open — half-collected numbers move, get quoted, and cannot be taken back. When it closes, respondents get their results first; that was the deal we made to get them.
Journalists can have the findings before publication under embargo. Write to us and say what you are working on and when you need it. We will send the figures, the methodology and someone to talk to.
After publication an anonymised dataset is released so the figures can be checked independently. It is reduced first so no combination of answers can identify a respondent or a small organisation, and free-text answers are excluded.
Contact
Anything about the census, the method, or a cut of the data that is not published: survey@thebriefinternationaleducation.com. A person reads it, usually the same day.
Interviews with the hosts, in English or Portuguese, can be arranged through the same address.