Higher education governance under AI and geopolitical disruption: a socio-technical framework for administrative artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) has reached the administrative core of the universities, where students are recruited, admitted and supported. We call this administrative AI, meaning chatbots, predictive analytics and automated screening applied to administration rather than to teaching. It arrived rapidly, at an uncertain moment for higher education governance. Geopolitical upheaval is troubling student mobility and internationalisation, and universities whose finances depend on international enrolment are discovering how resilient they are. Research has been slow to follow, remaining confined to teaching and learning. Where administrative AI is noticed, it is classified as routine efficiency, far from the politics of mobility or the question of what institutions can govern. We ask three questions here. What motivates higher education institutions (HEIs) to include AI in their administrative services, and what global and geopolitical forces shape those drivers? How do such systems intersect with visa regimes, with regional education hubs, and with the financial exposure of universities that depend on international enrolment? And which governance conditions make administrative AI strengthen institutional resilience, equity and participation, and which let it erode them? Socio-technical systems theory supplies our main lens, with globalisation and diffusion research working behind it. From these perspectives we build a framework of five drivers, which are infrastructural readiness, competitive positioning under enrolment volatility, regulatory and mobility mandates, commercial platform ecosystems and sustainability legitimacy. We give each one a mechanism, a cast of actors and a characteristic risk, and different combinations direct institutions to different paths. Three socio-technical propositions organise the reading, examined against institutional cases and six documented episodes in which administrative or mobility automation failed or faced resistance. We also take up higher education as a site of soft power, automation's effect on staff as well as student mobility, and the leadership capabilities without which governance conditions stay on paper. Our central claim is that administrative AI poses a governance question rather than a merely technical one. Whether it produces resilience or dependency turns on procurement terms, contestability, who takes part, and what gets audited. The technology settles none of it.