This final PKMastery workshop post is what I’m referring to as the last step toward the first step, meaning that while I’m through with the formal/structured activities and curated lessons from Harold Jarche, there’s such tremendous potential for even deeper learning, with a renewed commitment toward PKM.
Jarche shares a report from many years ago about the most valued Future Work Skills. He writes of how: “The report identified six drivers of change.
Longevity, in terms of the age of the workforce and customers
Smart machines, to augment and extend human abilities (quite obvious since 2023)
A computational world, as computer networks connect
New media, that pervade every aspect of life
Superstructed organizations, that scale below or beyond what was previously possible
A globally connected world, with a multitude of local cultures and competition from all directions
Ten future [present] work skills were derived from these drivers and these were seen to be critical for success in the emerging network era workplace. In 2014 a relatively simple infographic was published to show the relationship between these drivers and skills. Of these 10 skills, four compose the essence of personal knowledge mastery:
sense-making
social intelligence
new media literacy
cognitive load management
Participants in the workshop are then invited to focus on which competency we would most like to develop in, as part of our overall PKM practice. I’m torn between sense-making and cognitive load management. While further understanding of systems thinking and sense-making practices would certainly help me in my ongoing learning, I recognize my lack of sufficient discipline for what a focus on cognitive load management might bring me.
Throughout this process of blogging my way through Harold Jarche’s Harold Jarche’s Personal Knowledge Mastery workshop, I essentially wrote the equivalent of half of a book. When I tell myself that I don’t have time for certain pursuits in my life, these past six weeks would seem to counter those self-limiting beliefs. While I’m not actually interested, necessarily, in writing a book for other people at this exact moment, my shift in focus to a more reflective and open writing style for all these posts has felt liberating. As Ronald Burt shares:
It is not being in the know, but rather having to translate between different groups so that you develop gifts of analogy, metaphor, and communicating between people who have difficulty communicating to each other.
Having no idea who will ever read these words, but knowing that the writing practice this workshop has instilled in me has been tremendously helpful in my own sense-making. James Lang would say I’m getting lots of practice writing to an imaginary audience and that has felt good. By Jarche asking us to engage on Mastodon and to use the #PKMastery hashtag, I’ve been able to share my work with a niche audience, reconnecting with people I hadn’t been in regular touch with for a long while, in addition to meeting a couple of new people along the way.
Turning inquiries into enrollments is where real growth happens. In today’s competitive education market, generating leads is just the beginning. The bigger challenge? Guiding prospective students through the decision-making journey thoughtfully, strategically, and at scale.
That’s where lead nurturing in education comes in.
Done right, lead nurturing builds trust over time. It moves beyond one-off follow-ups or generic emails, instead delivering timely and relevant touchpoints that support prospects at each stage of their journey. For schools and universities, it’s one of the most powerful levers for boosting application and enrollment rates.
This post breaks down how educational institutions worldwide are evolving their lead nurturing strategies for 2025. We’ll cover actionable techniques like segmenting by intent, building automation that feels personal, and aligning communication with what Gen Alpha expects. Along the way, we’ll share real-life examples to illustrate how schools are implementing this in practice.
Are you looking for education marketing services?
Our expert digital marketing services can help you attract and enroll more students!
Changing Student Expectations in 2025 (Gen Z and Gen Alpha)
Why is fast response time so important in student lead nurturing? Today’s prospective students, spanning late Gen Z and the emerging Generation Alpha, expect immediacy and personalization. These digital natives grew up with instant streaming, smart devices, and AI assistants. When they reach out to schools, they expect the same level of responsiveness. In fact, most prospective students enroll at the first institution that replies. That first-touch speed is no longer a bonus; it’s the baseline.
This shift has raised the bar for student engagement. When a teen submits an inquiry at 8 p.m. or a parent messages on Sunday morning, they want a prompt reply. Waiting days for an email or being stuck in a voicemail loop is a fast track to lost leads. Live chat, chatbots, text messaging, and fast email responses have become expected, not exceptional.
Example: To meet these expectations, the University of Johannesburg implemented MoUJi, an AI-powered chatbot on their website and messaging platforms to provide instant 24/7 answers to prospective student inquiries. This chatbot handles common admissions questions (e.g. application status, program info) and syncs with student records, significantly improving first-response times for Gen Z/Gen Alpha prospects. UJ’s always-on approach has led to faster conversions, as more than half of students now enroll at the first institution to reply, making immediacy the new baseline.
Of course, speed alone isn’t enough. Students also expect relevance. A student asking about health sciences should not receive a generic welcome packet. Provide tailored content, whether it’s a program-specific brochure, alumni video, or next steps based on where they are in the enrollment process.
Tone and channel matter too. Younger Gen Alpha students may prefer casual WhatsApp or Instagram DMs. Adult learners might gravitate toward email or phone. The goal is to meet students where they are, with the right message, at the right time.
Actionable insight: Audit your current inquiry process. Are you responding within the first hour? Are you using the same platforms where students made contact? If not, explore adding a chatbot, setting up automated SMS/email alerts, or staggering staff shifts to cover peak hours. In 2025, responsiveness is no longer a luxury; it’s the difference between a lead and a lost opportunity.
Segmenting Leads for Targeted Nurturing
To nurture leads effectively, one size cannot fit all, because not all leads are equal. A key early step is lead segmentation: categorizing and organizing your inquiries into meaningful groups.
How can segmenting leads improve enrollment outcomes for schools? Segmentation helps you focus your energy where it pays off, ensuring each prospective student gets information and attention tailored to their needs. You can segment leads on multiple dimensions: source of the lead, program interest, timeline to enrollment, and engagement behavior. Breaking your giant inquiry list into smaller segments lets you craft follow-up strategies that resonate with each group, rather than blasting generic messages to everyone.
What are useful segmentation categories for schools? Consider these four core dimensions from HEM’s lead nurturing in education framework:
Source: How did the lead find you (e.g., organic website form, paid ad, education fair)? A student from a high-intent channel, like an agent referral, may need a different approach than someone from a broad awareness campaign.
Program or Interest Area: What are they interested in studying? Target content accordingly.
Enrollment Timeline: Are they looking to enroll now or years from now? Your follow-up cadence should reflect that.
Engagement Behavior: Have they interacted with your emails, attended a webinar, or ignored follow-ups? Hot leads deserve more attention.
By tagging leads across these criteria, you can prioritize and personalize your outreach, automate smarter, and increase conversion efficiency. For example, “Fall 2025 Business Masters prospects from Facebook” who opened three emails might get invited to an alumni panel, while “2026 boarding school parents” could receive nurturing newsletters and event invites over a longer cycle.
Example: International House Dublin, a prominent English-language school, effectively segments its wide-ranging audience, which includes everyone from teenagers to corporate professionals, to ensure personalized lead nurturing. The school uses its CRM and marketing automation to group inquiries by age, course interest, and language level. A 15-year-old exploring summer camps receives youth-oriented content like social media snippets or student testimonials, while a 40-year-old business English prospect might get LinkedIn-style resources or an invite to a professional language webinar. This segmentation strategy ensures tailored, relevant communication for each lead, improving both engagement and conversion.
Actionable Insight: If you’re just starting, begin by tagging leads by program and temperature (“hot,” “warm,” “cold”). Even a simple domestic vs. international distinction helps tailor outreach. Segmentation is the essential first step in treating leads as individuals, not numbers. And in 2025, that personal touch is now expected.
Prioritizing and Scoring Your Leads
Once you’ve segmented your inquiries, the next step is to determine lead quality. Which inquiries are most likely to turn into enrollments? Ideally, your admissions team would personally follow up with every lead. But limited time and resources mean you need to focus on the best opportunities. Lead prioritization and lead scoring allow you to rank leads by their likelihood to enroll, guiding where to devote personalized outreach versus automated nurturing.
Start by identifying signals that suggest high intent. Did the lead schedule a tour? Attend a webinar? Engage with multiple emails? Our HEM webinar series advises schools to “identify each online source that delivers leads, and rank which sources tend to deliver the highest-intent prospects.” Historical data can help here; perhaps students from referral programs convert more often than those from general ads.
Lead scoring formalizes this process. Assign points to meaningful actions and attributes: +10 for a virtual event, +5 for local applicants, +5 for a relevant test score, -5 for vague interest in a distant intake. The result is a numeric ranking that helps you target high-potential leads with fast, personal follow-up while keeping lower-interest leads on longer nurturing paths.
Example: Business School Lausanne (Switzerland) uses a data-driven lead scoring model to prioritize inquiries most likely to enroll. BSL assigns points for behaviors and attributes (e.g., +10 for attending a webinar, +5 if local, -5 if long timeline) and tracks this in their CRM. This scoring helped BSL’s small admissions team focus on quality over quantity. “Each program has its own logic… and season,” notes BSL’s dean, so they leverage data to target high-intent leads by region and timing. By concentrating outreach on top-scoring international prospects, the school not only improved efficiency but also enhanced global diversity in its intakes (since they could devote more time to engaged candidates from various countries rather than chasing every cold lead).
Actionable Insight: Define a few high-priority criteria for your school and flag those leads. Build tiered workflows, personal outreach for top scorers, automated flows for the rest, and refine your model over time using enrollment results.
Ensuring CRM Hygiene and Integration
A sophisticated CRM is only as effective as the data it holds. Without regular maintenance, even the best platforms can become cluttered, inconsistent, and fragmented, undermining your lead nurturing efforts. CRM hygiene means keeping your database clean, updated, and fully integrated with all your lead capture channels.
First, ensure every lead source flows directly into your CRM. Whether it’s your website inquiry forms, live chat, student fairs, or Facebook messages, all data should be centralized. Avoid manual transfers whenever possible to reduce errors and response delays. Forms, event sign-ups, and chatbots should automatically populate fields and trigger workflows in real time.
Next, standardize how data is entered and tagged. Use predefined categories and consistent naming conventions. If one lead source is labeled “HS Fair” and another “High School Event,” your reporting will be skewed. CRM hygiene also means merging duplicate entries, correcting missing data, and regularly reviewing fields for accuracy.
Compliance is another core aspect. Be sure your CRM tracks communication consent in accordance with regional laws like GDPR, CASL, and CAN-SPAM. Respecting privacy builds trust and protects your institution legally.
Example: Griffith College (Ireland): Undertook a comprehensive CRM cleanup and integration initiative that paid off in enrollment gains. As Ireland’s largest private college, Griffith had amassed a large inquiry database in HubSpot over the years. In 2022, they partnered with consultants to audit this CRM data, merge duplicates, update missing fields, and standardize lead sources. They also integrated all lead capture points – website forms, event sign-ups, Facebook lead ads – so that every prospect flows directly into HubSpot in real time (eliminating error-prone manual imports). After these hygiene improvements and streamlining of workflows, Griffith saw a 20% year-over-year increase in registered learners for Spring 2023. Clean data also enabled better segmentation; “dedicated workflows” now target specific audiences in their market with relevant content automatically.
Actionable Insight: Schedule monthly data checks and quarterly audits to ensure consistency, eliminate duplicates, and verify integration across all lead sources. Clean data enables smarter, faster, and more personalized outreach.
Automating Lead Nurturing Workflows
With segmented, prioritized, and clean data in place, automation becomes the engine that powers scalable, personalized communication. Lead nurturing in education workflows ensures that no inquiry is overlooked and that each prospective student receives timely, relevant touchpoints guiding them toward enrollment.
What role does automation play in modern lead nurturing strategies? Automation enables schools to nurture large numbers of leads while maintaining personalization. Automated workflows deliver timely touchpoints, such as welcome emails, event reminders, application prompts, and follow-up messages, based on a lead’s actions or profile. With branching logic and program-specific workflows, automation ensures no inquiry is overlooked and frees staff to focus on high-value, high-intent leads.
Workflows are automated sequences of communications and tasks triggered by specific actions or characteristics. For instance, a lead who submits an inquiry form might automatically receive a welcome email, followed by a testimonial video, and later an invitation to apply. Use branching logic that adjusts messaging based on behavior. If a lead clicks a financial aid link, they receive scholarship information. If they remain inactive, they’re routed into a slower, long-term campaign.
This systematized approach enables your team to engage thousands of prospects without manual effort. It also supports tiered nurturing: high-priority leads can trigger alerts for personal outreach, while low-priority leads receive regular updates through drip campaigns.
Automation by program type and lead score further refines communication. Undergraduate prospects might get campus life content and application deadlines, while MBA leads receive career stats and admissions webinars.
Example:Michael Vincent Academy (USA): This Los Angeles beauty academy uses marketing automation to nurture leads at scale. As a small, private school (~350 students/year) without state funding, MVA needed to work “smarter, not harder,” says its CEO. They implemented HEM’s Mautic CRM to automate repetitive recruitment tasks: inquiry form submissions trigger immediate personalized emails, and scheduled drip campaigns send course info and alumni success stories over time. The CRM also tracks each lead’s progress and alerts staff when a high-value prospect engages (so they can personally reach out). The result is that “key elements of the academy’s workflow are now automated, allowing staff to spend more time connecting with prospective students,” rather than manual data entry.
Actionable Insight: Start with a “welcome series” automation. Then build event follow-ups and dormant lead workflows. Use branching logic to scale personalization and free your team for high-touch moments.
Engaging Leads Across Multiple Channels
In 2025, engaging prospective students effectively means communicating across the full range of channels they use every day. Relying on email alone is no longer enough. Students and their families expect institutions to be present and responsive on email, text, social media, messaging apps, and even video calls. By orchestrating conversations across these platforms, schools can deliver a seamless and personalized lead-nurturing experience.
Email remains foundational for many schools because it’s scalable and direct. But augmenting email with SMS or text messaging can increase visibility and response, particularly for time-sensitive communications like deadline reminders or event invitations. A friendly text from an admissions counselor often prompts a faster reply than an email alone.
Messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat are essential for reaching international audiences. Schools that integrate their CRM with these apps can ensure students receive real-time support in their preferred environments. Meanwhile, chatbots and live chat widgets on institutional websites offer 24/7 responsiveness, capturing leads and answering questions immediately, even outside business hours.
Social media content also plays a subtle but powerful role in nurturing. Students often monitor a school’s Instagram or TikTok after inquiring, using it to assess campus life, student experiences, and the overall vibe. Frequent, engaging posts, such as student takeovers, Q&A videos, and highlight reels from events, build trust and connection. Private groups on Facebook or Discord can further nurture admitted students by creating a sense of belonging before they even arrive.
Finally, video calls and phone consultations remain invaluable for more complex or personal conversations, especially with parents or mature learners. Scheduling one-on-one chats after a lead shows interest helps deepen the relationship and guide the student toward enrollment.
Example: Queen Anne’s School exemplifies coordinated multi-channel engagement. They ran dual campaigns that targeted both parents and students: engaging Facebook and Instagram ads were tailored for parents, while vibrant Snapchat ads focused on student interests. This approach ensured the entire decision-making unit received relevant messaging on their preferred platforms. By tailoring content and channel per audience, Queen Anne’s created a connected, multi-touch nurturing experience that contributed to better recruitment outcomes.
Actionable Insight: Review your communication strategy and expand beyond your primary channel. Add one new platform, whether a texting tool, chatbot, or social campaign, and measure its impact. Prioritize consistency and responsiveness, not volume, and always align messaging with where each prospect is in their decision journey.
Personalizing the Nurture Journey
Today’s students are used to hyper-customized experiences from the apps and services they use daily. If your school sends generic emails or one-size-fits-all messages, you risk losing the attention and trust of prospective students. Personalization helps you build real connections, and it can significantly increase your chances of converting an inquiry into an enrollment.
Start with the basics: use the student’s first name and program of interest in every message. “Hi, Sam, we saw you’re exploring our Biology program…” is far more effective than a bland greeting. Most CRMs and email tools allow this kind of dynamic personalization with ease.
Next, tailor content to fit the student’s interest and where they are in their journey. Someone researching a business degree should receive content about business-related careers, program features, or a student success story from that faculty – not generic school-wide information. Similarly, if a lead has already applied, they should be receiving reminders about next steps, not introductory program brochures.
Behavioral personalization adds another layer. If a student lingers on your financial aid page, follow up with a scholarship guide. If they start but don’t finish an application, trigger a helpful reminder email or call.
Finally, consider personalization at scale through tools like personalized video. A student who receives a message like “Hi, Jordan – congrats on your acceptance to our engineering program!” is more likely to feel recognized and valued.
Example: West Texas A&M delivered an extraordinary level of personalization in admissions by having its president record 3,000 individual welcome videos for newly admitted students. In Spring 2021, President Walter Wendler spent nearly 200 hours personally addressing each admitted student by name, congratulating them, and mentioning their intended major in a short video clip. The videos helped incoming freshmen feel a human connection to the university before ever setting foot on campus. Indeed, WTAMU officials believed this effort would tip the scales for students deciding where to enroll, by showing that WTAMU sees them as individuals, not numbers.
Effective lead nurturing starts with emails and running campaigns, but it’s also about tracking what works and refining your strategy over time. Without measurement, you’re flying blind. Schools that succeed in converting inquiries into enrollments are those that monitor their funnel closely: from inquiry to application, admission, and enrollment. Every stage can offer insight if you’re capturing the right data.
At the core, this means using your CRM to track where leads come from, how they interact with your communications, and what ultimately drives them to enroll. Schools should “measure leads and enrolled students by source”. Knowing, for instance, that webinar attendees convert at a higher rate than paid ad clicks allows you to double down on that tactic.
Equally important is monitoring engagement: Are students opening your emails? Clicking links? Attending virtual sessions? These are early signals of effectiveness. If email open rates drop off midway through a sequence, your messaging or timing may need adjustment.
It’s also critical to examine conversion rates between funnel stages. If your inquiry-to-application rate is stuck at 10%, targeted nurturing improvements, like faster replies or more tailored messaging, might lift it to 15%, a meaningful jump.
Actionable Insight: Create a monthly report that tracks each stage of your funnel, including lead source and engagement metrics. Pick one weak spot each quarter, run a small experiment, and measure the impact. Optimization is ongoing, and the key to sustained enrollment growth.
Embracing a Digital-First, Student-Centric Approach
Mastering lead nurturing in education today means more than adopting new tools, it requires a student-first mindset. In 2025, prospective students expect fast responses, personalized communication, and authentic engagement. Schools that align their outreach with these expectations, supported by data and automation, are seeing stronger results across the board.
The institutions highlighted in this article show that consistent, relevant nurturing works. It builds trust, improves yield, and creates better-fit incoming classes.
But nurturing is not just about conversions. It’s about respect. When a student receives helpful, well-timed guidance tailored to their interests, it signals that your school sees them as more than a number. That personal attention can tip the scales when it’s time to choose.
As you refine your student recruitment strategies, ask: Are we showing up where students are? Are we engaging quickly and meaningfully? Are we using our data wisely and ethically? With each improvement, you move closer to a recruitment process that feels less like marketing and more like service.
In short: every inquiry is the start of a journey. With thoughtful, digital-first nurturing, your school can guide more students to a confident, well-informed “yes.”
Are you looking for education marketing services?
Our expert digital marketing services can help you attract and enroll more students!
Frequently Asked Questions
Question: Why is fast response time so important in student lead nurturing?
Answer: Today’s prospective students, spanning late Gen Z and the emerging Generation Alpha, expect immediacy and personalization. These digital natives grew up with instant streaming, smart devices, and AI assistants. When they reach out to schools, they expect the same level of responsiveness.
Question: How can segmenting leads improve enrollment outcomes for schools?
Answer: Segmentation helps you focus your energy where it pays off, ensuring each prospective student gets information and attention tailored to their needs.
Question: What role does automation play in modern lead nurturing strategies?
Answer: Automation enables schools to nurture large numbers of leads while maintaining personalization. Automated workflows deliver timely touchpoints, such as welcome emails, event reminders, application prompts, and follow-up messages, based on a lead’s actions or profile.
We recently embarked upon a project to explore the development of higher education research topics over the last decades. The results were published in Review of Education. Our aim was to thematically map the field of research on higher education and to analyse how the field has evolved over time between 2000 and 2021. This blog post summarises our findings and reflects on the implications for HE research.
HE research continues to grow. HE researchers are located in globally diverse geographical locations and publish on diversifying topics. Studies focusing on the development of HE with a global-level analysis are increasingly emerging. However, most of these studies are limited to scientometric network analyses that do not include a content-related focus. In addition, they are deductive, indicating that they tried to fit their new findings into existing categories. Recently, Daenekindt and Huisman (2020) were able to capture the scholarly literature on higher education through an analysis of latent themes by utilising topic modelling. This approach got attention in the literature, and the study’s contribution was highlighted in an earlier SRHE blog post. We also found their study useful and built on it in our novel analysis. However, their analysis focused only on generating topics from a wide range of higher education journals and did not identify explanatory factors, such as change over the years or the location of publication. After identifying this gap, we worked towards moving one step further.
A central contribution of our study is the inclusion of a set of research content explanatory factors, namely: time, region, funding, collaboration type, and journals, to investigate the topics of HE research. In methodological terms, our study moves ahead of the description of the topic prevalence to the explanation of the prevalence utilizing structural topic modelling (Roberts et al, 2013).
Structural topic modelling is a machine learning technique that examines the content of provided text to learn patterns in word usage without human supervision in a replicable and transparent way (Mohr & Bogdanov, 2013). This powerful technique expands the methodological repertoire of higher education research. On one hand, computational methods make it possible to extract meaning from large datasets; on the other, they allow the prediction of emerging topics by integrating the strengths of both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Nevertheless, many scholars in HE remain reluctant to engage with such methods, reflecting a degree of methodological conservatism or tunnel vision (see Huisman and Daenekindt’s SRHE blog post).
In this blog post, our intention is not to go deep into the minute details of this methodological technique, but to share a glimpse of our main findings through the use of such a technique. With the corpus of all papers published between 2000 and 2021 in the top six generalist journals of higher education, as listed by Cantwell et al (2022) and Kwiek (2021) both, we analysed a dataset of 6,562 papers. As a result, we identified 15 emergent research topics and several major patterns that highlight the thematic changes over the last decades. Below, we share some of our findings, accompanied by relevant visualisations.
Glimpse at the main findings with relevant visuals
The emergent 15 higher education topics and three visibly rising ones
Our topic modelling analysis revealed 15 distinct topics, which are largely in line with the topics discussed in previous studies on this line (eg Teichler, 1996; Tight, 2003; Horta & Jung, 2014). However, there are added nuances in our analysis. For example, the most prevalent topics are policy and teaching/learning, which are widely acknowledged in the field, but new themes have emerged and strengthened over time. These themes include identity politics and discrimination, access, and employability. These areas, conceptually linked to social justice, have become central to higher education research, especially in US-based journals but not limited to them. The visual below demonstrates the changes over the years for all 15 topics.
The Influence of funding on higher education research topics
Research funding plays a crucial role in shaping certain topics, particularly gender inequality, access, and doctoral education. Studies that received funding exhibited a higher prevalence of these socially significant topics, underscoring the importance of targeted funding to support research with social impact. The data visualisation below summarises the influence of reported funding for each topic. The novelty of this pattern needs to be highlighted because we have not come across a previous study looking into the influence of funding existence on research topics in the higher education field.
The impact of collaboration on higher education research topics
Collaborative publications are more prevalent in topics such as teaching and learning, and diversity and social relations. By contrast, theoretical discussions, identity politics, policy, employability, and institutional management are more common in solo-authored papers. This pattern aligns with the nature of these topics and the data requirements for research. Please see the visualised data below.
We highlight that although the relationship between collaboration and citation impact or researcher productivity is well studied, we are not aware of any evidence of the effect of collaboration patterns on topic prevalence, particularly in studies focusing on higher education. So, this finding is a novel contribution to higher education research.
Higher education journals’ topic preferences
Although the six leading journals claim to be generalist, our analysis shows they have differing publication preferences. For example, Higher Education focuses on policy and university governance, while Higher Education Research and Development stands out for teaching/learning and indigenous knowledge. Journal of Higher Education and Review of Higher Education, two US-based journals, have the highest prevalence of identity politics and discrimination topics. Last, Studies in Higher Education has a significantly higher prevalence in teaching and learning, theoretical discussions, doctoral education, and emotions, burnout and coping than most of the journals.
Regional differences in higher education research topics
Topic focus varies significantly by the region of the first author. First, studies from Asia exhibit the highest prevalence of academic work and institutional management. Studies from Africa show a higher prevalence of identity politics and discrimination. Moreover, studies published by first authors from Eastern European countries stand out with the higher prevalence of employability. Lastly, the policy topic has a high prevalence across all regions. However, studies with first authors from Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean showed a higher prevalence of policy research in higher education than those from North America and Western Europe. By contrast, indigenous knowledge is most prominent in Western Europe (including Australia and New Zealand). The figure below demonstrates these in visual format.
Concluding remarks
Higher education research has grown and diversified dramatically over the past two decades. The field is now established globally, with an ever-expanding array of topics and contributors. In this blog post, we shared the results of our analysis in relation to the influence of targeted funding, collaborative practices, regional differences, and journal preferences on higher education research topics. We have also indicated that certain topics have risen in prevalence in the last two decades. More patterns are included in the main research study published in Review of Education.
It is important to note that we could only include the higher education papers published up to 2021, the latest available data year when we started the analyses. The impact of generative artificial intelligence and recent major shifts in the global geopolitics, including the new DEI policies in the US and overall securitisation of science tendencies, may not be reflected fully in this dataset. These themes are very recent, and future studies, including replications with similar approaches, may help provide newly emerging patterns.
Dr Yusuf Oldac is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Education Policy and Leadership at The Education University of Hong Kong. He holds a PhD degree from the University of Oxford, where he received a full scholarship. Dr Oldac’s research spans international and comparative higher education, with a current focus on global science and knowledge production in university settings.
Dr Francisco Olivas obtained his PhD in Sociology from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He joined Lingnan University in August 2021. His research lies in the intersections between cultural sociology, social stratification, and subjective well-being, using quantitative and computational methods.
This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.
Dive Brief:
Young college graduates are now spending more time unemployed than job hunters with only a high school diploma, according to an analysis published Monday.
Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland found that,from June 2024 to June 2025, 37.1% of unemployed workers between the ages of 22 and 27with at least a bachelor’s degree either found work or stopped looking for work each month. That’s compared to 41.5% of their peers who only completed high school.
Their report comes amid other signs of a tough job market for recent graduates. The most recent unemployment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, released Thursday, shows 9.7%of bachelor’s degree holders ages 20 to 24 were unemployed in September — up from 6.8% a year prior.
Dive Insight:
A college degree still provides young workers with economic and professional advantages, the Cleveland Fed analysis found. Once employed, college graduates earn more than their degreeless counterparts and experience increased job stability, it said.
However, researchers pointed to signs that some of the job market advantages of a college degree are eroding.
For decades, workers with a high school degree typically saw unemployment rates about 5 percentage points higher than college graduates did, according to the analysis.
That gap temporarily widened during the 2008 financial crisis, when high school graduates had a particularly difficult time finding work.
But the Great Recession obscured that the gap in job-finding rates between high school graduates and those with four-year college degrees had been slowly closing since the turn of the century, according to the Cleveland Fed researchers.
With brief exception during the pandemic, the unemployment rate gap between the two groups has slowly shrunk since 2008.
In July, the 12-month average unemployment rate for young college graduates stood only 2.5 percentage points lower than that of their peers without a postsecondary degree. That’s the smallest gap since the record low of 2.4 percentage points in March 2024.
That slim difference, combined with the delay in degree-holders getting hired, indicates “that a long period of relatively easier job-finding prospects for college grads has ended,” researchers said Monday.
“The labor market advantages conferred by a college degree have historically justified individual investment in higher education and expanding support for college access,” they said. “If the job-finding rate of college graduates continues to decline relative to the rate for high school graduates, we may see a reversal of these trends.”
The pandemic resulted in a tight labor market, but the Cleveland Fed researchers said their findings can’t solely be attributed to the long-lasting disruptions of COVID-19.
“If historically tight labor markets drove narrowing, the high school job-finding rate should have risen to match college rates rather than a decline in the college job-finding rate,” they said.
The decades-long trend also predates the influence of artificial intelligence on the job market.
Instead, the researchers noted that the timing correlates with a broader market shift from “college-biased to education-neutral growth in labor demand.”
“Declining job prospects among young college graduates may reflect the continued growth in college attainment, adding ever larger cohorts of college graduates to the ranks of job seekers, even though technology no longer favors college-educated workers,” they said.
However, older degree-holders are not seeing the same stark unemployment numbers.
In September, 3.6% of bachelor’s degree-holders ages 25 to 34 were unemployed, according to BLS data.That’s well under the overall unemployment rate of 4.4%, which is the highest it’s been in four years.
This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.
Dive Brief:
Preliminary case numbers for pertussis, or whooping cough, in the U.S. remain elevated in 2025, compared to immediately before the pandemic, when more than 10,000 cases were typically reported each year, according to recent figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Meanwhile, KFF reported this year that exemptions from school vaccination requirements — and particularly non-medical exemptions — have increased. In addition, the New York Academy of Sciences reported in May that disinformation across social media, politicization of vaccines and public figures promoting skepticism, “have all contributed to declining coverage, fueling the resurgence of pertussis.”
Dive Insight:
The Texas Department of State Health Services reported on Nov. 3 that it was tracking a significant increase in pertussis cases in 2025. According to provisional data, the agency said, “Texas has had more than 3,500 reported pertussis cases through October this year, roughly four times the number reported for the same period last year.”
The number of cases is also reportedly the highest for the state in 11 years.
Texas schools, among other entities like hospitals, are required to report individuals who are suspected of having pertussis within one work day, according to the state health agency.
This is the second consecutive year that Texas has experienced high year-over-year increases in reported pertussis cases, and it’s also the second consecutive year the state’s Department of State Health Services has issued a health alert, according to a news release.
The CDC said reported cases of pertussis are currently trending down in 2025 since a peak in November 2024, when more than six times as many cases were reported, compared to 2023. The agency added that case counts will likely change as it finalizes the data.
In September, Colorado-based healthcare system UCHealth reported that cases of whooping cough “are on track to be even worse this year than in 2024,” adding that health officials in parts of the state have warned of “a noticeable jump” in pertussis cases as kids have returned to school.
In many states across the U.S. — including Florida, Oregon and Washington — cases of pertussis as of Sept. 20 were already outpacing total year-to-date cases reported by the CDC in 2025. UCHealth’s September report noted that the worst U.S. pertussis outbreaks so far in 2025 were on the West Coast, with high numbers also reported in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, North Carolina and Arizona.
Other childhood diseases are also on the rise as a result of shifting attitudes toward vaccines and vaccine mandates. According to the CDC, the best defense against pertussis is a vaccination.
In March, measles infections spread across several U.S. states, a quarter-century after the potentially fatal disease had been declared eradicated in the U.S. in 2000.
In addition to the impact on student health, an uptick in acute and chronic illnesses can also increase chronic absenteeism issues for schools and school districts. A CDC study published last year found that in 2022, 5.8% of children experienced chronic school absenteeism for health-related reasons.
If you’ve attended a professional show or musical recently, chances are you’ve seen virtual set design in action. This approach to stage production has gained so much traction it’s now a staple in the industry. After gaining momentum in professional theater, it has made its way into collegiate performing arts programs and is now emerging in K-12 productions as well.
Virtual set design offers a modern alternative to traditional physical stage sets, using technology and software to create immersive backdrops and environments. This approach unlocks endless creative possibilities for schools while also providing practical advantages.
Here, I’ll delve into three key benefits: increasing student engagement and participation, improving efficiency and flexibility in productions, and expanding educational opportunities.
Increasing student engagement and participation
Incorporating virtual set design into productions gets students excited about learning new skills while enhancing the storytelling of a show. When I first joined Churchill High School in Livonia, Michigan as the performing arts manager, the first show we did was Shrek the Musical, and I knew it would require an elaborate set. While students usually work together to paint the various backdrops that bring the show to life, I wanted to introduce them to collaborating on virtual set design.
We set up Epson projectors on the fly rail and used them to project images as the show’s backdrops. Positioned at a short angle, the projectors avoided any shadowing on stage. To create a seamless image with both projectors, we utilized edge-blending and projection mapping techniques using just a Mac® laptop and QLab software. Throughout the performance, the projectors transformed the stage with a dozen dynamic backdrops, shifting from a swamp to a castle to a dungeon.
Students were amazed by the technology and very excited to learn how to integrate it into the set design process. Their enthusiasm created a real buzz around the production, and the community’s feedback on the final results were overwhelmingly positive.
Improving efficiency and flexibility
During Shrek the Musical, there were immediate benefits that made it so much easier to put together a show. To start, we saved money by eliminating the need to build multiple physical sets. While we were cutting costs on lumber and materials, we were also solving design challenges and expanding what was possible on stage.
This approach also saved us valuable time. Preparing the sets in the weeks leading up to the show was faster, and transitions during performances became seamless. Instead of moving bulky scenery between scenes or acts, the stage crew simply switched out projected images making it much more efficient.
We saw even more advantages in our spring production of She Kills Monsters. Some battle scenes called for 20 or 30 actors to be on stage at once, which would have been difficult to manage with a traditional set. By using virtual production, we broke the stage up with different panels spaced apart and projected designs, creating more space for performers. We were able to save physical space, as well as create a design that helped with stage blocking and made it easier for students to find their spots.
Since using virtual sets, our productions have become smoother, more efficient, and more creative.
Expanding educational opportunities
Beyond the practical benefits, virtual set design also creates valuable learning opportunities for students. Students involved in productions gain exposure to industry-level technology and learn about careers in the arts, audio, and video technology fields. Introducing students to these opportunities before graduating high school can really help prepare them for future success.
Additionally, in our school’s technical theater courses, students are learning lessons on virtual design and gaining hands-on experiences. As they are learning about potential career paths, they are developing collaboration skills and building transferable skills that directly connect to college and career readiness.
Looking ahead with virtual set design
Whether students are interested in graphic design, sound engineering, or visual technology, virtual production brings countless opportunities to them to explore. It allows them to experiment with tools and concepts that connect directly to potential college majors or future careers.
For schools, incorporating virtual production into high school theater offers more than just impressive shows. It provides a cost-effective, flexible, and innovative approach to storytelling. It is a powerful tool that benefits productions, enriches student learning, and prepares the next generation of artists and innovators.
Latest posts by eSchool Media Contributors (see all)
This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.
Dive Brief:
Many U.S. colleges are experiencing declines in undergraduate and graduate enrollment amid tightening visa policies, according to a new study released by NAFSA: Association of International Educators and other groups.
U.S. colleges reported a 6% average drop in new international bachelor’s enrollment and a 19% drop in new international master’s enrollment for the fall.Of some 200 surveyed U.S. institutions, 48% saw declines in their international bachelor’s students, and 63% experienced a drop-off in international graduate enrollment.
Canada suffered even more dramatic declines, while international student enrollment rose in Asian and European countries, according to the NAFSA study. Both U.S. and Canadian institutions primarily blamed restrictive government policies for the decline.
Dive Insight:
Since taking office, the Trump administration has launched a suite of aggressive policies that have made it difficult for many international students to study in the U.S.
Among other moves, dramatically slowed visa processing raised concerns this summer that tens of thousands of students might be stymied from coming to the U.S. for college.On top of that, the administration has revoked thousands of visas for international students already studying here and proposed a four-year cap on student visas, which could hit doctoral students particularly hard.
In the U.S., restrictive government policies were by far the No. 1 obstacle to international enrollment, with 85% of surveyed colleges citing them in the NAFSA study.That’s up from 58% of colleges that said the same in 2024.
“We are navigating one of the most dynamic moments in international education, driven in no small part by shifts in U.S. visa and immigration policy,”NAFSA Executive Director and CEO Fanta Aw said in a statement. “The ripple effects of these policy changes are being felt across campuses and communities around the world.”
The distant No. 2 concern was tuition and living costs, with 47% of U.S. respondents citing them as an obstacle this year.
As international enrollment declines take a toll on college finances, 36% of colleges surveyed by NAFSA said they plan to expand into new markets to adapt. Another 28% are planning budget cuts, and 26% intend to expand online programming to gin up enrollment.
To be sure, the U.S. isn’t the only country where government restrictions weigh on foreign enrollment. In Canada — where new international bachelor’s and master’s enrollment fell by 36% and 35%, respectively — 90% of polled colleges listed restrictive policies as the top obstacle to enrollment. European colleges, excluding those in the U.K., also listed restrictions as the primary obstacle.
The survey was conducted in October and drew on responses from 461 institutions across 63 countries, including 201 U.S. colleges.
The NAFSA study adds to mounting evidence of international enrollment drop-offs this fall. A survey of more than 800 colleges found that their international enrollment declined overall by 1% in fall 2025, with their graduate student enrollment plummeting by 12%, per the annual Open Doors report from the Institute of International Education and the U.S. Department of State released earlier this month.
New international enrollment fell even more overall — by 17% — this fall, according to the Open Doors survey.
Back in 2020, during the height of the Covid epidemic, high school students in the U.S. state of Connecticut sat down with News Decoder founder Nelson Graves to explore a number of thorny topics that ranged from the death penalty to whether animals should be kept in zoos.
The students in “American Voices & Choices: Ethics in Modern Society” at Westover School had been working with News Decoder since the start of that academic year, mastering the process we call Pitch, Report, Draft and Revise — or PRDR — to identify topical issues at the intersection of ethics and public policy.
They pitched ideas they wanted to report on: teen health; police brutality; abortion; economic privilege in the environmental movement; the risks of experimental vaccines; the impact of alcohol on youth.
Later, each student received detailed feedback from a News Decoder editor, aimed at helping them narrow their research and produce original reporting.
Westover was an early News Decoder school partner. Since our founding 10 years ago, News Decoder has worked with high school and university students in 89 schools across 23 countries.
Decoding news in school
Teachers have used us as part of their course curricula, as extra credit assignments and as standalone learning opportunities for their students.
At Realgymnasium Rämibühl Zürich in Switzerland, teacher Martin Bott brings News Decoder in each year. In one weeklong workshop, students produced podcasts. Over five days, they pitched News Decoder stories about a problem they identified in their local communities, identified an expert to interview, found how that problem was relevant to people in other countries and then wrote a podcast script, revised it and recorded it. “[News Decoder] enabled me to do a few projects which really open up perspectives for the students, give them a taste of life beyond the classroom and of the world of journalism,” Bott said.
In another workshop for RGZH, News Decoder turned students into “foreign correspondents.” They were tasked with finding stories in Zurich that people in other countries would find interesting. Like the students in the podcasting workshop, they then found an expert to interview, wrote a draft and revised it with the goal of publishing it on News Decoder.
One student in the workshop noticed a demonstration of people with dogs and got up the nerve to talk to one of them. They were from an organization that rescued Spanish greyhounds and she decided it would be a good idea for a News Decoder story. The story she wrote ended up as one of News Decoder’s most-read stories of all time.
Not only have Bott’s students been able to publish stories on News Decoder, many of these stories, including the article about the greyhounds, have won awards in our twice yearly global storytelling competition.
“We’ve been delighted to get so many of those stories published on News Decoder,” Bott said. “That’s very, very motivating for the students. And it’s a wonderful learning process for them because they realise it’s not just about school rules and so on out there.”
Challenging students to do more
Bott said that working with professionals at News Decoder gets the students to step up. “When you’re a journalist, you’ve got a responsibility,” he said. “That’s something we’ve been able to talk about with journalists who’ve met us from various parts of the world through News Decoder. And you’ve got real pressure as well. And they’re not, I think they’re not quite used to that. So it really opens their eyes.”
At The Hewitt School in New York, 15 teens at the all-girls school meet once a month as a club. They read and discuss News Decoder stories and pitch their own stories. They also prepare for a cross-border webinar; each year they join with students from a News Decoder partner school in another country, and decide with those students on a topic to explore.
They then research the topic, interview experts and come together with the students from the other school to present their findings live in a video conference before an audience of people from the two schools.
In 2024, students from The Thacher School in California worked with peers at the European School of Brussels II on a webinar on consumerism and the human impacts of climate change.
Russell Spinney is faculty adviser for News Decoder at Thacher. “The webinars really were kind of ways just to get to know each other, discover that we actually do have some common interests. But not only that, that we also have problems that are similar,” he said.
“News Decoder’s workshops,” he said, “get students to think of ways to communicate their research beyond the classroom and connect with what’s going on in the world.” News Decoder has partnered schools this way in some 50 school-school webinars.
According to an August email obtained by The Chronicle, Jenny Edmonds, associate dean of communications and marketing at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy, encouraged faculty to “continue to engage with the media to disseminate [their] research as [they] have always done,” while also cautioning that “media attention to institutions of higher education and discussions about institutional responses to policy changes have become more prominent than ever.”
“In this moment in particular, questions about Duke and current events are being answered by Frank Tramble and his team,” Edmonds wrote. “If you are contacted by the media about overarching issues confronting the University, please forward the requests to [Sanford’s Senior Public Relations Manager Matt LoJacono] and me.”
Although it wasn’t a universitywide directive, The Chronicle obtained emails that show some other departments also gave their faculty similar instructions to route media requests through the university’s central communications channels.
At an Academic Council meeting in October, Duke’s president, Vincent Price, and council chair, Mark Anthony Neal, commended faculty members for not speaking to a New York Times reporter; the reporter had visited the campus while working on a story about the Trump administration targeting Duke’s diversity, equity and inclusion program.
“It was pretty amazing that [the reporter] actually got no commentary from Duke officials and Duke faculty,” Neal continued. “Even if it wasn’t overtly communicated to the community, the community understood the stakes of that mode of inquiry.”
At that meeting Price also called Trump’s higher education compact—which would allegedly give universities preferential funding in exchange for making sweeping institutional policy changes— “highly problematic,” according to The Chronicle. Despite public pressure, Duke hasn’t officially rejected the terms of the compact.
Four people were arrested at a Nov. 10 protest at UC Berkeley over an event for Turning Point USA.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
The Department of Education is reviewing potential violations of the Clery Act at the University of California, Berkeley following violence at a campus protest.
Fights broke out and four people were arrested at a Nov. 10 protest against an event for Turning Point USA, the conservative student group founded by Charlie Kirk, Cal Matters reported. The organization has received newfound attention after Kirk was shot and killed while speaking at Utah Valley University in September, exactly two months before the event at UC Berkeley.
The Department of Education announced the launch of the investigation Tuesday.
“Just two months after Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was brutally assassinated on a college campus, UC Berkeley allowed a protest of a Turning Point USA event on its grounds to turn unruly and violent, jeopardizing the safety of its students and staff. Accordingly, the Department is conducting a review of UC Berkeley to ensure that it has the procedures in place to uphold its legal obligation to maintain campus safety and security,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement.
ED also accused the university of having “a history of violating the Clery Act” in a news release announcing the investigation, citing a $2.4 million fine and settlement agreement in 2020 for UC Berkeley’s failure to properly classify 1,125 crimes on campus and insufficient record keeping.
The Department of Justice previously announced a probe into the university earlier this month, claiming that “Antifa,” a decentralized, left-wing movement was involved in the Nov. 10 protests.
UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof told Inside Higher Ed by email that the university “has an unwavering commitment to abide by the laws, rules and policies that are applicable to the university” and “will continue to cooperate with governmental inquires and investigations.”
Mogulof added that the university provided public reports about two violent crimes that occurred Nov. 10: a fistfight over an attempted robbery and someone being hit by a thrown object. He also highlighted efforts by administrators “to support the First Amendment rights of all by deploying a large number of police officers from multiple jurisdictions, and a large number of contracted private security personnel” and closing off parts of campus on the day of the protest.
The investigation comes as the Trump administration has clashed with the University of California system in recent months as it sought to cut off federal research funding over alleged antisemitism and how administrators handled pro-Palestinian campus protests in spring 2024. The federal government has also demanded the University of California, Los Angeles, agree to a $1.2 billion fine and make a number of changes in response to the administration’s concerns.
A federal judge recently ruled against the federal government and its “blanket policy of denying any future grants” to UCLA and determined that the Trump administration can’t demand payouts from University of California member institutions as it conducts civil rights investigations.
