It has been 16 months since Malaysia closed its borders to the world. At the current point of writing, the country has undergone extended periods of lockdown, where various socioeconomic sectors - higher education included - were forced to a halt in order to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 within the community. Since April 2020, staff and students rely on various teleconferencing applications, learning management systems, and cloud-based collaborative tools to sustain daily operations in teaching, research, and administration. As borders remain closed, talented individuals - international students, international scholars, and domestic students - are unable to move across countries. Such circulation of talent is essential not only for knowledge development of the Malaysian society, but also for the country’s economy, as education exports to the tune of RM 40,000 per international student generates jobs, foreign exchanges, and businesses for communities. The private higher education sector, which hosts over 50 percent of international talent for the country, is at risk of closure, subsequently reducing higher education opportunities to the domestic market. What is the future outlook for Malaysia, a known host country for international students? Is there a future beyond international student recruitment? Most importantly, is the Malaysian higher education community ready to embrace a future sans international students, assuming that borders will remain closed, or in restricted movement phase for the next 2 years? The Malaysian Society for Higher Education Policy & Research Development (PenDaPaT) convened a discourse session on 24 June 2021 at 1.45pm (GMT+8), so as to identify constructive policy recommendations to ensure survivability of the Malaysian higher education system in the long run. It follows up from the first discourse series held on 24 March 2021 (recording available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m65go...), which briefly touched on the subject.