The acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday rescinded guidance that prevented immigration arrests at schools, churches and colleges.
Since 1993, federal policy has barred immigration enforcement actions near or at these so-called sensitive areas.The decision to end the policy comes as the Trump administration is moving to crack down on illegal immigration and stokingfears of mass deportations.
“This action empowers the brave men and women in [Customs and Border Protection] and [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] to enforce our immigration laws and catch criminal aliens—including murders and rapists—who have illegally come into our country,” acting DHS secretary Benjamine Huffman said in a statement. “Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest. The Trump administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense.”
Advocates for undocumented people have warned that such a policy change was possible, and some college leaders have said they won’t voluntarily assist in any effort to deport students or faculty solely because of their citizenship status, although they said they would comply with the law. On Wednesday, the Justice Department said it would investigate state and local officials who don’t enforce Trump’s immigration policies.
Authenticity has become a cornerstone of successful education marketing campaigns. Nothing speaks louder to prospective students than real experiences shared by current students. That’s why we recommend the combined use of two powerful tools: student ambassador programs and user-generated content (UGC).
These strategies harness the voices of your students to create compelling, authentic narratives that resonate. In this blog, we’ll explore the enrollment-boosting potential of student ambassadors and UGC for education marketing, the benefits they offer, and actionable steps to integrate them into your strategy. Let’s get started!
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Understanding the Role of a Student Ambassador
What is a student ambassador? A student ambassador is a current student who represents your institution in various capacities, from marketing and recruitment to campus events. These individuals are typically chosen for their enthusiasm, communication skills, and ability to connect with diverse audiences.
What do student ambassadors do? As the face of your school, student ambassadors embody its culture and values, offering prospective students and their families an authentic glimpse into campus life.
The roles of student ambassadors are varied. They may host campus tours, participate in Q&A sessions during open houses, or even create content for your social media platforms. By sharing their personal experiences, they help humanize your institution, breaking down barriers and building trust.
Source: University of Waterloo
Example: On its website, the University of Waterloo has a dedicated page for members of its community who are interested in its student ambassador program. This page details the role of a student ambassador, the requirements for candidates, their workload, and compensation. When you launch your student ambassador program, use site content to provide vital information to potential candidates and the students they’ll support in their roles. Use social media to keep your audience updated on the application process and involve student ambassadors in content creation to establish a relationship between them and the rest of your student body.
Reach out for help implementing effective enrollment-boosting digital marketing strategies!
What Is User-Generated Content (UGC)?
User-generated content (UGC) refers to any content created by your students, alumni, or even staff, rather than your marketing team. This can include photos, videos, testimonials, social media posts, or blogs that showcase their authentic experiences. Unlike polished advertising campaigns, UGC is often raw and unfiltered, making it highly relatable and trustworthy.
Now that audiences are bombarded with promotional material, UGC stands out. It delivers a level of authenticity that professionally crafted content simply cannot replicate. For prospective students, seeing someone “just like them” thriving at your institution can be the deciding factor in their enrollment journey.
Source: University of Oxford | TikTok
Example: Take a look at the comments on this TikTok video. The bottom one shows how many prospective students are turning to current students for advice and insights into their journey with your institution. This “day in the life” video from a University of Oxford student offers a glimpse into campus life from a personal perspective. Videos shared on a student’s personal page often feel more genuine since they don’t come across as promotional content.
That’s not to say your school shouldn’t engage with these posts! Use hashtags, like #universityofoxford, to find UGC created by your community and reshare it on your school’s profile. To encourage more of this content, promote specific hashtags and even run contests or challenges to inspire creativity and engagement.
The Benefits of Student Ambassadors and UGC
Though their methodology is different, both student ambassador programs and UGC help to tell your school’s unique story authentically.
These methods are particularly effective at humanizing your school’s brand. Discover some more of the unique benefits you can see when you combine these strategies correctly.
Authenticity and Trust: Both student ambassadors and UGC provide unfiltered insights into your institution. Prospective students are more likely to trust the words of a peer than a marketing brochure. When real students share their stories, it creates a sense of transparency and trust.
Increased Engagement: Content created by student ambassadors and peers often performs better on social media platforms. Audiences are more likely to engage with posts that feel genuine and relatable. This increased engagement can translate to higher visibility for your institution.
Cost-Effectiveness: Leveraging the voices of your students can reduce the need for extensive advertising budgets. While there may be costs associated with training or compensating ambassadors, the return on investment through increased applications and enrollment often outweighs the initial expenditure.
Community Building: By involving students in your marketing efforts, you foster a sense of pride and belonging. Ambassadors feel more connected to your institution, and their enthusiasm is infectious, positively influencing both their peers and prospective students.
How to Build a Successful Student Ambassador Program
Building a student ambassador program involves creating a structured initiative that aligns with your school’s marketing goals and fosters authentic engagement. A successful program requires careful planning, clear objectives, and ongoing support to empower ambassadors as true representatives of your institution. Here, we’ll walk you through the essential steps to design and implement a program that connects with prospective students and amplifies your school’s story.
Define Clear Objectives
Clear objectives are the cornerstone of a student ambassador program, aligning with your marketing goals and guiding ambassadors toward success. Start by clearly outlining the program’s purpose. For example, increasing applications, enhancing campus tour experiences, or boosting social media engagement.
This clarity of intent should be paired with measurable goals, to help ambassadors understand what success looks like. Measurable goals could be increasing tour attendance by 20% or generating a set number of social media posts each month
Tailor these objectives to match the unique strengths of each ambassador, assigning roles that play to their talents, such as public speaking for campus tours or storytelling for blog posts and videos. Providing a clear role description that details their responsibilities, tasks, and time commitments is equally critical to avoid confusion and set expectations.
To foster motivation, explain the “why” behind their tasks, helping them see how their efforts impact prospective students, build trust in the institution, and contribute to enrollment goals. Regular check-ins or feedback sessions can also ensure ambassadors stay on track, allowing for adjustments and maintaining engagement. With clearly defined objectives and the right support, ambassadors can confidently represent your institution and drive meaningful results.
Recruit the Right Ambassadors
Select ambassadors who reflect the diversity and values of your institution. Look for individuals who are enthusiastic, articulate, and comfortable sharing their experiences. Peer recommendations, faculty referrals, and application processes can help identify the best candidates.
Foster Collaboration
Facilitate collaboration between ambassadors and your marketing team. Regular meetings can help align their content with your broader campaigns while maintaining authenticity. Ambassadors should feel supported but not micromanaged.
Source: University of Windsor
Example: The University of Windsor demonstrates trust in its student ambassadors with a unique feature on its website. It allows current and prospective students to select an ambassador to chat with for answers to their school-related questions. To replicate this success, implement a comprehensive training program to ensure consistency and quality. Clear expectations enable your ambassadors to take on key responsibilities confidently, delivering a strong return on your investment.
Provide Comprehensive Training
Familiarize Ambassadors with Your Institution’s Key Messaging and Values Begin by familiarizing ambassadors with your institution’s key messaging and values. This includes providing them with a clear understanding of your school’s mission, vision, and what sets it apart from competitors. Equip them with talking points about academics, extracurricular offerings, campus facilities, and student life, ensuring consistency in how they communicate your brand. Role-playing exercises can be particularly effective here, helping ambassadors practice delivering messages in a variety of scenarios, such as open houses, campus tours, or online Q&A sessions.
Train Ambassadors on Social Media Best Practices Training should also include social media best practices, especially if ambassadors are creating content for your platforms. Teach them how to craft posts that are engaging and aligned with your school’s tone and style. Provide guidelines on appropriate language, photo and video quality, and compliance with privacy policies.
Develop Public Speaking Skills Since many ambassadors will engage with prospective students and families in person, public speaking training is invaluable. Help them refine their communication skills with workshops that focus on clarity, confidence, and storytelling. Encourage them to share personal anecdotes about their experiences at your school, as these authentic stories are often the most memorable. Practice sessions with constructive feedback can significantly boost their comfort in delivering presentations or handling impromptu questions.
Build Soft Skills for Diverse Audiences Effective training also involves building soft skills like empathy, adaptability, and cultural awareness, especially for ambassadors interacting with diverse audiences.
Include scenarios that challenge them to navigate different cultural perspectives or address sensitive questions tactfully. By fostering these skills, you ensure ambassadors can create welcoming and inclusive experiences for prospective students and their families.
Incorporate Interactive Training Methods To make training engaging and practical, use a mix of interactive methods such as role-playing, group discussions, and hands-on activities. Incorporate real-world examples and success stories from past ambassadors to inspire new recruits and show them what’s possible. Providing a training manual or digital resource hub can also serve as a handy reference for ambassadors as they grow into their roles.
Provide Ongoing Support and Refreshers Finally, ongoing support and refreshers are critical. Schedule periodic check-ins to provide additional guidance, address challenges, and celebrate successes. The more prepared they are, the more effectively they’ll represent your school.
Empower Ambassadors to Create
Empowering student ambassadors to create their own content is one of the most effective ways to showcase the authentic, lived experiences that resonate with prospective students. By trusting ambassadors with creative freedom, you enable them to craft content that feels genuine and relatable—qualities that polished marketing campaigns often struggle to replicate.
Start by encouraging ambassadors to focus on their personal experiences and unique perspectives. Heartfelt testimonials are another powerful form of content. Whether it’s a written story, a video, or a social media post, ambassadors sharing their personal journeys—why they chose your school, how it’s impacted their lives, and what they’ve learned—can create an emotional connection with viewers.
To provide inspiration and structure, consider giving student ambassadors a content calendar – a detailed content plan that outlines the where, what, and when of your posts. Highlighting diverse voices within your ambassador team ensures a broad range of experiences and perspectives are represented, appealing to a wider audience.
Celebrate Their Contributions
Recognize and reward your ambassadors for their efforts. This can range from financial compensation to exclusive perks like access to networking events or career development opportunities. Publicly celebrating their work reinforces their value and motivates others to get involved.
Source: New York University
Example: Here, New York University’s School of Global Public Health welcomes a new student ambassador, celebrating her accomplishments in the field, describing her role in the NYU community, and directing the audience to her student blog post. In addition to monetary rewards, student ambassadors appreciate public acknowledgments of their contributions.
Measure Success
Track the impact of your ambassador program using metrics such as social media engagement, website traffic, and application rates. Use this data to refine your approach, ensuring continuous improvement.
Incorporating UGC into Your Marketing Strategy
A UGC marketing campaign can be a goldmine for schools looking to leverage their communities to tell their story. By encouraging students to share their experiences, you tap into a wealth of relatable and engaging material that resonates with prospective students. Let’s explore how to integrate UGC into your marketing strategy for maximum impact.
Create Opportunities for UGC
Encourage your students to share their experiences by hosting contests, themed hashtag campaigns, or student takeovers on social media. The more accessible you make the process, the more likely students are to participate.
Source: Caleontwins | TikTok
Example: Here, Humber College has paid well-known influencers to promote a contest called Humber Bring It. The aim was to showcase all the unique skills students brought to their community. In their video, the Caleon twins shared all the essential details of the contest such as the deadline, prizes for winners (a 5000 dollar tuition credit or a laptop), and the hashtag that each contestant should use. Contests like this are the perfect way to create a UGC buzz around your institution.
Showcase UGC Across Platforms
To maximize the impact of user-generated content (UGC), feature it prominently across your marketing platforms. Incorporate student stories, photos, and videos on your website’s homepage, within program pages, and in blog posts to provide a genuine glimpse into campus life. Social media channels are another natural home for UGC, where they can drive engagement and create relatable touchpoints with prospective students. Consider integrating this content into admissions brochures, emails, and campus tour presentations to ensure consistent messaging.
Before sharing any UGC, prioritize student consent. Always seek permission from contributors, clearly explaining where and how their content will be used. Providing written guidelines and gaining explicit agreement ensures transparency and builds trust. By celebrating your students’ experiences respectfully and prominently, you showcase your school’s vibrant community and also create a foundation of authenticity and ethical storytelling that resonates with your audience.
Maintain Quality Control
While UGC is inherently less polished, maintaining a level of quality ensures it aligns with your institution’s values and messaging. Begin by establishing clear guidelines for students contributing content.
These guidelines should outline your school’s tone, branding, and expectations for appropriateness, while still encouraging creativity and individuality. For example, provide tips on photography and video basics, such as lighting and framing, to enhance visual appeal without compromising authenticity.
Review content before publication to ensure it represents your school positively. This doesn’t mean heavily editing or sanitizing the material—rather, it’s about ensuring the content reflects your institution’s culture, is free of inappropriate language or imagery, and avoids unintentional misrepresentation.
Offering feedback to students can also be a valuable learning experience, helping them refine their work while staying true to their voice. By balancing authenticity with quality, you showcase the best of your community in a way that’s both relatable and professional.
Engage with UGC Creators
Show appreciation for students who contribute content by engaging with their posts, sharing their work, or even spotlighting them in dedicated campaigns. This not only boosts their morale but also encourages others to participate.
Use UGC to Tell Stories
Go beyond individual posts by weaving UGC into cohesive narratives. For example, compile videos and testimonials into a series showcasing different aspects of campus life. Storytelling adds depth and emotional resonance to your campaigns.
Bringing It All Together
Student ambassador programs and UGC are avenues for building authentic connections with your audience. By leveraging the voices of your students, you showcase your institution’s unique story in a way that resonates deeply with prospective students and their families.
At Higher Education Marketing, we specialize in helping schools like yours unlock the potential of these strategies and many others. Whether you’re just starting or looking to refine your approach, our expertise ensures your campaigns drive meaningful engagement and results.
Your students are your greatest storytellers. Let their voices elevate your brand and inspire the next generation to join your community.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is a student ambassador?
A student ambassador is a current student who represents your institution in various capacities, from marketing and recruitment to campus events.
What do student ambassadors do?
As the face of your school, student ambassadors embody its culture and values, offering prospective students and their families an authentic glimpse into campus life.
National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity
FR Document: 2025-01459 Citation: 90 FR 7677 PDF Pages 7677-7679 (3 pages) Permalink Abstract: This notice sets forth the agenda, time, and instructions to access or participate in the February 19-20, 2025 meeting of NACIQI, and provides information to members of the public regarding the meeting, including requesting to make written or oral comments. Committee members will meet in-person while accrediting agency representatives and public attendees will participate virtually.
Q: What is the university’s mandate behind this role? How does it help align with and advance the university’s strategic priorities?
A: First of all, thank you for the opportunity to share more about this exciting new position. I’m thrilled about the potential of this role and the chance to welcome a new colleague to the Center for Academic Innovation—an extraordinary organization that I care deeply about—who will join us in shaping the future of education.
The inaugural chief education solutions officer (CESO) is pivotal to CAI’s mission to collaborate across campus and around the world to create equitable, lifelong educational opportunities for learners everywhere. By helping CAI deliver offerings that are learner-centered, research-driven, scalable and sustainable, the CESO will directly support the University of Michigan’s Vision 2034, particularly the impact area of life-changing education.
This role is designed for a dynamic leader ready to solve organizational learning and workforce development challenges while driving growth through innovative, impactful solutions. By developing scalable and sustainable educational models, the CESO will ensure U-M remains at the forefront of lifelong learning and talent development on a global scale.
The CESO is not just about executing current strategies—it’s a leadership role charged with helping to forge a bold new path for education. By addressing emerging trends like workforce transformation, AI and the growing demand for upskilling, this role will help learners and organizations thrive in a rapidly evolving world. The CESO’s work will empower learners and position U-M as a leader in education innovation for generations to come.
Q: Where does the role sit within the university structure? How will the person in this role engage with other units and leaders across campus?
A: The CESO will report directly to me in my capacity as the founding executive director of the Center for Academic Innovation and will be an additional key member of the senior leadership team at CAI. This role sits at the intersection of education innovation, strategic partnerships and business development, ensuring seamless collaboration between external stakeholders and CAI’s internal teams.
The CESO will work closely with units that already engage with industry and organizational partners and schools and colleges across campus that extend their reach through innovative programs and initiatives. Through these collaborations, the CESO will help identify and deliver innovative solutions to meet workforce development needs and support sustainable partnerships with organizations looking to support their current and future employees in a rapidly changing economy.
For example, the CESO might work with a school to design a custom program for an industry partner, collaborate with units across campus to expand U-M’s impact in key markets, help an organization to effectively utilize Michigan Online offerings or integrate CAI’s expertise into new initiatives that benefit learners and organizations alike. This role is about connecting ideas, people and resources to drive impact. By aligning CAI’s innovative capabilities with partner needs, the CESO ensures U-M’s resources create transformative outcomes both on campus and beyond.
Q: What would success look like in one year? Three years? Beyond?
A: Success in this role is all about creating momentum—whether by building early partnerships, driving measurable growth or laying the groundwork for transformative initiatives. Here’s what we envision at each stage of this journey:
In one year: The CESO will have established a strong foundation for growth by building early partnerships with industry leaders, meeting key growth targets and launching initial programs that deliver measurable value for learners and organizations. This first year is about setting the stage—building relationships, aligning CAI’s capabilities with external needs and creating momentum for the future. Importantly, the CESO will work alongside a really talented senior leadership team. Year one is also about creating strong connections within this group, building trust and finding ways to support each other.
In three years: The CESO will have significantly scaled CAI’s impact, with a portfolio of partnerships that reflect innovative, sustainable approaches to workforce development and lifelong learning. Internally, we’ll see streamlined systems for managing partnerships, delivering programs and providing exemplary relationship support. Externally, CAI will be recognized as a trusted leader in educational solutions that address real-world challenges through highly relevant programs that build on interdisciplinary breadth of excellence.
Beyond three years: Long-term success means driving transformative innovation in education—at both the individual and organizational levels. The CESO’s work will have deepened CAI’s reputation for empowering learners everywhere while also positioning U-M as a leader in lifelong learning and workforce development. The legacy of this role will be an ecosystem of partnerships and programs that inspire and uplift learners across the globe.
At every stage, success in this role is about creating meaningful, lasting impact for learners and partners. That said, I’m looking to hire a colleague who will not only embrace this vision of success but also challenge it—pushing us to explore uncharted possibilities and reach new heights we haven’t yet imagined.
Q: What kinds of future roles would someone who took this position be prepared for?
A: The CESO role is an incredible opportunity for someone looking to advance their career in business development, partnership leadership or workforce innovation—whether within higher education or in related industries.
This role provides direct experience in managing high-impact partnerships, driving revenue growth and designing innovative learning solutions for diverse audiences. It’s a unique combination of strategic thinking, relationship management and educational innovation that builds a strong foundation for future leadership roles.
The skills developed in this position—including expertise in lifelong learning, workforce transformation and sustainable business growth—are highly transferable to roles in education, industry or even global organizations. Whether leading similar initiatives at another institution or shaping workforce strategies for a global enterprise, the CESO will leave this role with the tools to make an even bigger impact.
This position enhances vital leadership skills, such as building trust with stakeholders, navigating complex organizational challenges and creating scalable solutions. It’s a perfect launchpad for individuals ready to shape the future of education at the intersection of academia and industry.
Joining this team means stepping into a vibrant, forward-thinking environment where your contributions will be valued, your ideas will have impact and you’ll have the space to grow, innovate and truly make a difference.
I’m truly excited to welcome a dynamic new partner to our team—could it be you?
The House is preparing to take up the Laken Riley Act later this week after the Senate passed the bill Monday, Politico reported.
Twelve Democrats joined all of the higher chamber’s Republicans to vote for the immigration bill, named for a 22-year-old woman killed by an undocumented immigrant in Georgia last year. Immigration policy experts say the bill could have consequences for international students applying to study in the U.S.
The bill would primarily force harsher detention policies for undocumented immigrants charged with crimes, but it also expands the power of state attorneys general, allowing them to sue the federal government and seek sweeping bans on visas from countries that won’t take back deportees.
The legislation now goes back to the House, which passed a similar but not identical bill earlier this month. If it passes the House a second time, it would then land on President Donald Trump’s desk, providing an early win on one of his highest-priority issues, immigration.
AI research tools such as OpenAI o1 have now reached test score levels that meet or exceed the scores of those who hold Ph.D. degrees in the sciences and a number of other fields. These generative AI tools utilize large language models that include research and knowledge across many disciplines. Increasingly, they are used for research project ideation and literature searches. The tools are generating interesting insights to researchers that they may not have been exposed to in years gone by.
The field of academe has long emphasized the single-discipline research study. We offer degrees in single disciplines; faculty members are granted appointments most often in only one department, school or college; and for the most part, our peer-reviewed academic journals are in only one discipline, although sometimes they welcome papers from closely associated or allied fields. Dissertations are most commonly based in a single discipline. Although research grants are more often multidisciplinary and prioritize practical solution-finding, a large number remain focused on one field of study.
The problem is that as we advance our knowledge and application expertise in one field, we can become unaware of important developments in other fields that directly or indirectly impact the study in our chosen discipline. Innovation is not always a single-purpose, straight-line advance. More often today, innovation comes from the integration of knowledge of disparate fields such as sociology, engineering, ecology and environmental developments, and expanding understanding of quantum physics and quantum computing. Until recently, we have not had an efficient way to identify and integrate knowledge and perspectives from fields that, at first glance, seem unrelated.
“Amidst the urgency of increasingly complex global challenges, the need for integrative approaches that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries has never been more critical. Climate change, global health crises, sustainable development, and other pressing issues demand solutions from diverse knowledge and expertise. However, effectively combining insights from multiple disciplines has long been a significant hurdle in academia and research.
“The Multi-LLM Iterative Prompting Methodology (MIPM) emerges as a transformative solution to this challenge. MIPM offers a structured yet flexible framework for promoting and enhancing multidisciplinary research, peer review, and education. At its core, MIPM addresses the fundamental issue of effectively combining diverse disciplinary perspectives to lead to genuine synthesis and innovation. Its transformative potential is a beacon of hope in the face of complex global challenges.”
Even as we integrate AI research tools and techniques, we, ourselves, and our society at large are changing. Many of the common frontier language models powering research tools are multidisciplinary by nature, although some are designed with strengths in specific fields. Their responses to our prompts are multidisciplinary. The response to our iterative follow-up prompts can take us to fields and areas of expertise of which we were not previously aware. The replies are not coming solely from a single discipline expert, book or other resource. They are coming from a massive language model that spans disciplines, languages, cultures and millennia.
As we integrate these tools, we too will naturally become aware of new and emerging perspectives, research and developments generated by fields that are outside our day-to-day knowledge, training and expertise. This will expand our perspectives beyond the fields of our formal study. As the quality of our AI-based research tools expands, their impact on research cannot be overstated. It will lead us in new directions and broader perspectives, uncovering the potential for new knowledge, informed by multiple disciplines. One recent example is Storm, a brainstorming tool developed by the team at Stanford’s Open Virtual Assistant Lab (OVAL):
“The core technologies of the STORM&Co-STORM system include support from Bing Search and GPT-4o mini. The STORM component iteratively generates outlines, paragraphs, and articles through multi-angle Q&A between ‘LLM experts’ and ‘LLM hosts.’ Meanwhile, Co-STORM generates interactive dynamic mind maps through dialogues among multiple agents, ensuring that no information needs overlooked by the user. Users only need to input an English topic keyword, and the system can generate a high-quality long text that integrates multi-source information, similar to a Wikipedia article. When experiencing the STORM system, users can freely choose between STORM and Co-STORM modes. Given a topic, STORM can produce a structured high-quality long text within 3 minutes. Additionally, users can click ‘See BrainSTORMing Process’ to view the brainstorming process of different LLM roles. In the ‘Discover’ section, users can refer to articles and chat examples generated by other scholars, and personal articles and chat records can also be found in the sidebar ‘My Library.’”
One of the concerns raised by skeptics at this point in the development of these research tools is the security of prompts and results. Few are aware of the opportunities for air-gapped or closed systems and even the ChatGPT temporary chats. In the case of OpenAI, you can start a temporary chat by tapping the version of ChatGPT you’re using at the top of the GPT app, and selecting temporary chat. I do this commonly in using Ray’s eduAI Advisor. OpenAI says that in the temporary chat mode results “won’t appear in history, use or create memories, or be used to train our models. For safety purposes, we may keep a copy for up to 30 days.” We can anticipate these kinds of protections will be offered by other providers. This may provide adequate security for many applications.
Further security can be provided by installing a stand-alone instance of the LLM database and software in an air-gapped computer that maintains data completely disconnected from the internet or any other network, ensuring an unparalleled level of protection. Small language models and medium-size models are providing impressive results, approaching and in some cases exceeding frontier model performance while storing all data locally, off-line. For example, last year Microsoft introduced a line of SLM and medium models:
“Microsoft’s experience shipping copilots and enabling customers to transform their businesses with generative AI using Azure AI has highlighted the growing need for different-size models across the quality-cost curve for different tasks. Small language models, like Phi-3, are especially great for:
Resource constrained environments including on-device and offline inference scenarios
Latency bound scenarios where fast response times are critical.
Cost constrained use cases, particularly those with simpler tasks.”
In the near term we will find turnkey private search applications that will offer even more impressive results. Work continues on rapidly increasing multidisciplinary responses to research on an ever-increasing number of pressing research topics.
The ever-evolving AI research tools are now providing us with responses from multiple disciplines. These results will lead us to engage in more multidisciplinary studies that will become a catalyst for change across academia. Will you begin to consider cross-discipline research studies and engage your colleagues from other fields to join you in research projects?
Ricardo Torres, the CEO of the National Student Clearinghouse, is retiring next month after 17 years at the helm. His last few weeks on the job have not been quiet.
On Jan. 13, the clearinghouse’s research team announced they had found a significant error in their October enrollment report: Instead of freshman enrollment falling by 5 percent, it actually seemed to have increased; the clearinghouse is releasing its more complete enrollment report tomorrow. In the meantime, researchers, college officials and policymakers are re-evaluating their understanding of how 2024’s marquee events, like the bungled FAFSA rollout, influenced enrollment; some are questioning their reliance on clearinghouse research.
It’s come as a difficult setback at the end of Torres’s tenure. He established the research center in 2010, two years after becoming CEO, and helped guide it to prominence as one of the most widely used and trusted sources of postsecondary student data.
The clearinghouse only began releasing the preliminary enrollment report, called the “Stay Informed” report, in 2020 as a kind of “emergency measure” to gauge the pandemic’s impact on enrollment, Torres told Inside Higher Ed. The methodological error in October’s report, which the research team discovered this month, had been present in every iteration since. And a spokesperson for the clearinghouse said that after reviewing the methodology for their “Transfer and Progress” report, which they’ve released every February since 2023, was also affected by the miscounting error; the 2025 report will be corrected, but the last two were skewed.
Torres said the clearinghouse is exploring discontinuing the “Stay Informed” report entirely.
Such a consequential snafu would put a damper on anyone’s retirement and threaten to tarnish their legacy. But Torres is used to a little turbulence: He oversaw the clearinghouse through a crucial period of transformation, from an arm of the student lending sector to a research powerhouse. He said the pressure on higher ed researchers is only going to get more intense in the years ahead, given the surging demand for enrollment and outcomes data from anxious college leaders and ambitious lawmakers. Transparency and integrity, he cautioned, will be paramount.
His conversation with Inside Higher Ed, edited for length and clarity, is below.
Q: You’ve led the clearinghouse since 2008, when higher ed was a very different sector. How does it feel to be leaving?
A: It’s a bit bittersweet, but I feel like we’ve accomplished something during my tenure that can be built upon. I came into the job not really knowing about higher ed; it was a small company, a $13 million operation serving the student lending industry. We were designed to support their fundamental need to understand who’s enrolled and who isn’t, for the purposes of monitoring student loans. As a matter of fact, the original name of the organization was the National Student Loan Clearinghouse. When you think about what happened when things began to evolve and opportunities began to present themselves, we’ve done a lot.
Q: Tell me more about how the organization has changed since the days of the Student Loan Clearinghouse.
A: Frankly, the role and purpose of the clearinghouse and its main activities have not changed in about 15 years. The need was to have a trusted, centralized location where schools could send their information that then could be used to validate loan status based on enrollments. The process, prior to the clearinghouse, was loaded with paperwork. The registrars that are out there now get this almost PTSD effect when they go back in time before the clearinghouse. If a student was enrolled in School A, transferred to School B and had a loan, by the time everybody figured out that you were enrolled someplace else, you were in default on your loan. We were set up to fix that problem.
What made our database unique at that time was that when a school sent us enrollment data, they had to send all of the learners because they actually didn’t know who had a previous loan and who didn’t. That allowed us to build a holistic, comprehensive view of the whole lending environment. So we began experimenting with what else we could do with the data.
Our first observation was how great a need there was for this data. Policy formulation at almost every level—federal, state, regional—for improving learner outcomes lacked the real-time data to figure out what was going on. Still, democratizing the data alone was insufficient because you need to convert that insight into action of some kind that is meaningful. What I found as I was meeting schools and individuals was that the ability and the skill sets required to convert data to action were mostly available in the wealthiest institutions. They had all the analysts in the world to figure out what the hell was going on, and the small publics were just scraping by. That was the second observation, the inequity.
The third came around 2009 to 2012, when there was an extensive effort to make data an important part of decision-making across the country. The side effect of that, though, was that not all the data sets were created equal, which made answering questions about what works and what doesn’t that much more difficult.
The fourth observation, and I think it’s still very relevant today, is that the majority of our postsecondary constituencies are struggling to work with the increasing demands they’re getting from regulators: from the feds, from the states, from their accreditors, the demand for reports is increasing. The demand for feedback is increasing. Your big institutions, your flagships, might see this as a pain in the neck, but I would suggest that your smaller publics and smaller private schools are asking, “Oh my gosh, how are we even going to do this?” Our data helps.
Q: What was the clearinghouse doing differently in terms of data collection?
A: From the postsecondary standpoint, our first set of reports that we released in 2011 focused on two types of learners that at most were anecdotally referred to: transfer students and part-time students. The fact that we included part-time students, which [the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System] did not, was a huge change. And our first completion report, I believe, said that over 50 percent of baccalaureate recipients had some community college in their background. That was eye-popping for the country to see and really catalyzed a lot of thinking about transfer pathways.
We also helped spur the rise of these third-party academic-oriented organizations like Lumina and enabled them to help learners by using our data. One of our obligations as a data aggregator was to find ways to make this data useful for the field, and I think we accomplished that. Now, of course, demand is rising with artificial intelligence; people want to do more. We understand that, but we also think we have a huge responsibility as a data custodian to do that responsibly. People who work with us realize how seriously we take that custodial relationship with the data. That has been one of the hallmarks of our tenure as an organization.
Q: Speaking of custodial responsibility, people are questioning the clearinghouse’s research credibility after last week’s revelation of the data error in your preliminary enrollment report. Are you worried it will undo the years of trust building you just described? How do you take accountability?
A: No. 1: The data itself, which we receive from institutions, is reliable, current and accurate. We make best efforts to ensure that it accurately represents what the institutions have within their own systems before any data is merged into the clearinghouse data system.
When we first formed the Research Center, we had to show how you can get from the IPEDS number to the clearinghouse number and show people our data was something they could count on. We spent 15 years building this reputation. The key to any research-related error like this is, first, you have to take ownership of it and hold yourself accountable. As soon as I found out about this we were already making moves to [make it public]—we’re talking 48 hours. That’s the first step in maintaining trust.
That being said, there’s an element of risk built into this work. Part of what the clearinghouse brings to the table is the ability to responsibly advance the dialogue of what’s happening in education and student pathways. There are things that are happening out there, such as students stopping out and coming back many years later, that basically defy conventional wisdom. And so the risk in all of this is that you shy away from that work and decide to stick with the knitting. But your obligation is, if you’re going to report those things, to be very transparent. As long as we can thread that needle, I think the clearinghouse will play an important role in helping to advance the dialogue.
We’re taking this very seriously and understand the importance of the integrity of our reports considering how the field is dependent on the information we provide. Frankly, one of the things we’re going to take a look at is, what is the need for the preliminary report at the end of the day? Or do we need to pair it with more analysis—is it just enough to say that total enrollments are up X or down Y?
Q: Are you saying you may discontinue the preliminary report entirely?
A: That’s certainly an option. I think we need to assess the field’s need for an early report—what questions are we trying to answer and why is it important that those questions be answered by a certain time? I’ll be honest; this is the first time something like this has happened, where it’s been that dramatic. That’s where the introspection starts, saying, “Well, this was working before; what the heck happened?”
When we released the first [preliminary enrollment] report [in 2020], we thought it’d be a one-time thing. Now, we’ve issued other reports that we thought were going to be one-time and ended up being a really big deal, like “Some College, No Credential.” We’re going to continue to look for opportunities to provide those types of insights. But I think any research entity needs to take a look at what you’re producing to make sure there’s still a need or a demand, or maybe what you’re providing needs to pivot slightly. That’s a process that’s going to be undertaken over the next few months as we evaluate this report and other reports we do.
Q: How did this happen, exactly? Have you found the source of the imputation error?
A: The research team is looking into it. In order to ensure for this particular report that we don’t extrapolate this to a whole bunch of other things, you just need to make sure that you know you’ve got your bases covered analytically.
There was an error in how we imputed a particular category of dual-enrolled students versus freshmen. But if you look at the report, the total number of learners wasn’t impacted by that. These preliminary reports were designed to meet a need after COVID, to understand what the impact was going to be. We basically designed a report on an emergency basis, and by default, when you don’t have complete information, there’s imputation. There’s been a lot of pressure on getting the preliminary fall report out. That being said, you learn your lesson—you gotta own it and then you keep going. This was very unfortunate, and you can imagine the amount of soul searching to ensure that this never happens again.
Q: Do you think demand for more postsecondary data is driving some irresponsible analytic practices?
A: I can tell you that new types of demands are going to be put out there on student success data, looking at nondegree credentials, looking at microcredentials. And there’s going to be a lot of spitballing. Just look at how ROI is trying to be calculated right now; I could talk for hours about the ins and outs of ROI methodology. For example, if a graduate makes $80,000 after graduating but transferred first from a community college, what kind of attribution does the community college get for that salary outcome versus the four-year school? Hell, it could be due to a third-party boot camp done after earning a degree. Research on these topics is going to be full of outstanding questions.
Q: What comes next for the clearinghouse’s research after you leave?
A: I’m excited about where it’s going. I’m very excited about how artificial intelligence can be appropriately leveraged, though I think we’re still trying to figure out how to do that. I can only hope that the clearinghouse will continue its journey of support. Because while we don’t directly impact learner trajectories, we can create the tools that help people who support learners every year impact those trajectories. Looking back on my time here, that’s what I’m most proud of.
Yesterday, we published a piece by SOAS Vice-Chancellor Adam Habib and Lord Dr. Michael Hastings, Chair of the SOAS Board of Trustees, on equitable transnational partnerships. In today’s piece, Dana Gamble, Policy Manager (Skills, Innovation and International) at GuildHE and Dr Esther Wilkinson, Director of Innovation and Learning at Royal Agricultural University and Chair of the GuildHE International Network, look again at international partnerships and how institutions can be proactive and productive on the international stage.
It is not news that the higher education sector’s relationship with international activity is strained, from recruiting students to delivering research and innovation partnerships with institutions overseas. While significant financial pressures have built up through institutional reliance on international student fees, this is far from the only headwind the sector currently faces on international delivery. Recent political motivations and wider geopolitical factors have contributed to policy churn on visa policies and delayed, or scrapped, funding arrangements such as Horizon Europe and the European Regional Development Fund. Ultimately, this landscape has led institutions to prioritise developing short-term partnerships to solve long-term problems. These forces combined are affecting the UK’s global reputation as a competitive destination for education and research.
Looking back to inform the future
It is important to reflect and scrutinise how we got here. In a context where the UK has the lowest levels of public spending on tertiary education in the OECD, the UK’s higher education institutions have strategically used international activity to fill financial shortfalls. Whether that might be international student fees to fill deficits in domestic teaching and research income or transnational delivery to increase income without the overheads, these interventions have typically been siloed ventures designed specifically to fill gaps.
With this approach running out of steam for many, institutions are turning the dial towards focusing on responsible, holistic and trusted partnerships with international institutions that contribute to multiple, mutual aims. This approach, in the long term, should stimulate a steadier international partnership environment that does not rely on quick-fix activity to shoulder the UK’s funding deficits. While many higher education institutions have embraced this type of internationalisation, specialist and vocational institutions often already excel in this area, particularly when creating strong, skills-based, and mutually beneficial partnerships due to their strong links with industry and communities.
Specialist and vocationally-focused institutions have international reach and relevance
These institutions often operate in sectors where local and global contexts are deeply intertwined. Whether addressing global environmental challenges, healthcare crises, or creative and technological innovation, a responsible international partnership should consider not only the exchange of knowledge but also the socio-economic and environmental implications of that exchange.
By focusing on real-world skills and sector-specific expertise, these institutions bring a practical dimension to international collaborations that go beyond traditional learning, innovation and research, offering valuable lessons on how to engage globally to tackle economic and social issues with purpose.
RAU shows how holistic international collaborations can deliver impact
The GuildHE member, the Royal Agricultural University (RAU), has a long history of establishing, nurturing and successfully developing long-term strategic partnerships. Agriculture, climate change and food security are global issues that require international collaboration to address critical challenges across rural development, land management and sustainable farming practices.
RAU has multiple partners including in China, Uzbekistan, the United Arab Emirates (Sharjah) and Ukraine. It is one of the most trusted UK education providers in China and has been awarded the highest accolade by the Chinese Ministry of Education for its provision, the only specialist UK university to have this status in China. In Uzbekistan, RAU is a founding partner of the International Agricultural University, an institution jointly established with the Uzbek Government to ensure students have access to high-quality education to contribute to the economic, social, and cultural development of the country. RAU’s research, training, exchanges, and teaching partnerships with Sumy National Agrarian University in Ukraine have steadily built maturity. The partnership has led various international projects such as the evaluation of the damage to Ukrainian soil due to the current conflict, which has helped ensure the long-term viability of the agricultural economy in the country. RAU has worked to support Sharjah in establishing the University of Al Dhaid, enabling capacity building, development and delivery of education in sustainable agriculture, a feature of RAU’s ability to be flexible and agile due to its size.
RAU takes particular pride in the breadth and depth of its global relationships, with a synergistic and strategically aligned approach. Through such broad, multifaceted collaborations, RAU provides expertise and knowledge to help develop global agricultural sectors while enriching the educational experience of its students. As demonstrated in this example, vocational and specialist institutions are making particular efforts to establish, maintain and refresh international partnerships for longer-term benefits, focusing on multi-pronged international collaboration, enhancing cross-cultural understanding, and driving global innovation.
Expanding international partnerships takes work but can pay dividends
The internationalisation of higher education will always be shaped by global politics; education, work and skills policy; and the financial state of the sector. To reach stable waters through these domestic and global pressures, higher education institutions need to re-focus on their institutional strengths and start becoming proactive internationally. This can only be achieved, however, through supportive government policy that does not continue to discourage the sector from investing in sustainable, long-term and effective partnerships. This predominantly means establishing financial security for the full diversity of the sector to protect the foundation of specialist industries, and the future of the public sector and student choice – both domestically and internationally.
Additionally, reform is needed to the research and innovation system so it purposefully generates economic and social impact for all sectors, and on all scales. And finally, the development of properly-resourced, effective student and staff exchange programmes is needed to provide equality of opportunity for students at every institution, with intention.
With this government’s plans to link immigration policy more closely to skills policy and labour market pressures through Skills England, as well as the ambitions of the industrial strategy, higher education needs to be acknowledged as the future of economic growth through its role in the development of the workforce, diffusion of applied research and as leaders of global innovation. With this critical role, a holistic approach to partnerships will be vital to the effective implementation of these new strategies, and in helping to maintain the UK’s reputation as a global leader in learning, innovation and research.
The Teacher in the Machine: A Human History of Education Technology (Princeton University Press) will be published this May. I was lucky enough to receive an advance copy. It is too early to interview the author, the University of Virginia’s Anne Trumbore, about the book, as you will not be able to get your hands on it for a few months. I can’t help myself, though.
Like Anne, I am also a practitioner-scholar, working in and writing about the intersection of technology, learning and higher education change. While The Teacher and the Machine covers much of the same ground as my first co-authored book, Learning Innovation and the Future of Higher Education(JHUP, 2020), I learned much of what I didn’t know from reading Anne’s book.
As the publication of The Teacher in the Machine approaches, I’ll share a full (highly positive) review. Until then, to help build anticipation about the book’s launch and also get to know its author better, I thought the best place to start is a Q&A.
Q: Tell us about your current role at Darden (UVA) and the education and career path that you have followed.
A: I’m currently the chief digital learning officer, where I lead a team that designs, develops and delivers education that enables career mobility for learners at all ages and stages. I arrived at this stage through a pretty circuitous path that included time as a journalist and obituary writer, a copywriter for motion picture advertising, a writing teacher at SFSU and Stanford, and then a lateral hop into ed tech. My education path was somewhat more straightforward: straight to undergrad from high school. But my graduate degrees were driven by career aspirations and occurred decades apart. (I resemble a lot of the learners we are helping now in that regard.)
Oddly enough, my “unmarketable” undergrad degree in semiotics and my graduate work in writing and teaching writing got me hired full-time at Stanford, working on an adaptive grammar program that provided asynchronous personalized instruction and creating curriculum for and teaching at Stanford Online High School. That led to a role on the early team at Coursera, with a focus on working with university professors using (and developing) online peer review, which morphed into a role on the founding team at NovoEd, developing designs for social and project-based learning at scale. Then I pivoted back to higher ed with a role at Wharton, where I established Wharton Online.
The questions I was trying to answer there, most of which revolved around maximizing the effectiveness of, and revenue for, online education in business topics, led me to UVA. Its Darden School of Business had just received a transformational gift to establish the Sands Institute for Lifelong Learning, which is where I saw the puck going at the intersection of higher education and technology. I earned an education doctorate at Penn GSE during my time at Wharton because the questions I began asking about what we were doing and why were not easily answered within the confines of the business school.
Q: In The Teacher and the Machine, you tell the story of the birth and evolution of massive open online courses within the context of the history of educational technology. What are the lessons from the history of ed tech that we in higher education should absorb as we make decisions about the future of online education and AI for teaching and learning?
A: The main takeaway is that innovation in ed tech is particularly reliant upon ignorance of its history for a couple of main reasons: Innovation drives adoption (no one wants to invest in an “old” idea), and the idea of using technology to make education both more efficient and democratic consolidates power in the hands of the disrupters, who are almost always businessmen and scientists educated at the most elite universities in the world.
I believe that once you understand the history of ed tech and its intertwined beginnings with artificial intelligence, universities can be more clear-eyed about their business partnerships with ed-tech companies and their purchasing decisions, which are usually not driven by evidence-backed research. We also have the opportunity to be more thoughtful about our motives in distributing education “to the masses” and ask ourselves who this strategy benefits and why it is attractive to venture capital.
Finally—and this is a point you and a few others have made extremely well—it’s incumbent upon higher ed institutions to be informed about the innovation narrative that gets circulated, which enriches the same set of people and institutions over and over again. I have to believe that if we have a greater understanding of the history and the motives of the major players in ed tech, we can also ask better questions of our ed-tech providers and partners so that we can create educational experiences that provide more returns to learners than ed-tech investors.
Q: You are not only a student of higher education and digital learning, you are also a practitioner. How did your role throughout your career as a participant in the creation and development of MOOCs and other online learning initiatives impact how you write about that history in The Teacher in the Machine?
A: The closest metaphor I can think of is that it felt like putting together a 2,000-piece puzzle of a photograph I was in: I knew what it would look like, but I had to break down and examine all the pieces and then reassemble. The questions I asked of the events were less about what happened and more about why did it happen that particular way? What were the conditions that produced our actions? Living the history also provided opportunities to fill in the gaps that some more traditional records leave out.
I’m thinking especially of the daily minor decisions that were made under pressure that drove the history in unplanned directions, as well as the personalities of the main players. Experiencing these elements of the story and being able to report firsthand is one of the benefits to being in the circus ring instead of in the seats. Another is that you can directly see the audience, which provides a different lens than a more traditional history. Hopefully, the narrative benefited from the inside-out point of view.
You walk into the conference networking event, feeling alone, aware of the steady chatter throughout the room. You look to find someone you might know, you sense your breath growing faster and you experience that all-too-familiar pit in your stomach. You walk deeper into the room, taking a few grounding breaths, and notice others standing alone. You approach another conference attendee, feeling as if you are stepping outside of your body, and in your friendliest tone you introduce yourself and ask, “Where did you travel in from?”
You did it! You initiated small talk with a stranger.
Small talk is a mode of communication that occurs throughout the world, but not every culture engages in small talk to the same degree. In some cultures, it is expected, and in other cultures it can be perceived as inappropriate or rude. In addition to cultural context, one’s perception of small talk and propensity for engaging in it can be influenced by factors including, but not limited to, personality traits, degree of social comfort, mental health and wellness, past experiences, and the setting of the conversation. Small talk can also present specific challenges to language learners, neurodivergent individuals, people who are unaccustomed to talking with strangers and many others.
Merriam-Webster Dictionarydefines small talk as “light or casual conversation: chitchat.” (Seeing the word “chitchat” immediately brought me back to kindergarten, when my teacher, Mrs. Barker, would frequently say, “Kay, stop your chitchat.”) Cambridge Dictionarydefines small talk as, “conversation about things that are not important, often between people who do not know each other well.” The emphasis on “not important” can give the impression that small talk is useless, however, within the U.S cultural context, small talk holds great importance in connecting individuals and laying the foundation for more substantial communication. Think of small talk as the gateway to more meaningful conversations.
When done well, small talk relies on improvisation and adaptability, allowing for a flow of information and often uncovering unexpected insights and mutual interests. When I think of small talk I think of it as jazz, with each person riffing off the other to create a connection and to also make meaning in the moment. Effectively engaging in small talk by establishing commonalities can open a door for a future collaboration, expand your professional network, build rapport leading to a career or academic opportunity, enhance confidence and ease tension in an interview.
Do you wish that small talk felt less awkward and more meaningful? Apply these strategies to reduce your small talk stress and to contribute to your career success:
Get curious. Harness your curiosity as you engage in small talk. Take the scenario we began with: Someone might ask, “Where did you travel in from?” because they are generally interested in meeting people from different parts of the country or world. Someone else might ask this question as a gateway to finding a future collaborator from a specific country or academic institution. Don’t just ask questions for the sake of chatting, but rather ask about topics in which you are genuinely interested. This approach will make engaging in small talk more enjoyable and valuable to you, and your interaction will feel authentic to the person with whom you are speaking.
Listen actively. As the other person responds to your question, try to refrain from planning what you will next ask, but rather focus on absorbing what they are sharing. Consider reflecting an aspect of something they mentioned. For example, if in response to “Where did you travel in from?” they say, “I flew in from Greece last night, and this is my first time in the States; I’m a Ph.D. student at the University of Crete,” you might empathize with their journey and ask how long they are visiting. After further discussion, you might feel inclined to offer to host the individual if they plan to travel around. Your one question, the one that initiated the small talk exchange, could even lead to a lifelong professional relationship.
Consider the context. The definition of small talk in the Cambridge Dictionary refers to a “conversation about things that are not important.” I would challenge you to not dismiss small talk as trivial but rather leverage it for more meaningful conversation. When thinking about the setting in which you are engaging in small talk, you can guide the conversation toward greater meaning. It would be odd if the individual attending the networking event at the conference opened the conversation with their name and asked, “What do you think about the weather?” This question would seem very disconnected from the event and purpose of the networking session. However, if the individual were waiting outside at an uncovered bus stop, it might be natural to strike up a conversation about the weather. Having an awareness about the context and setting will lead to an authentic conversation.
Have go-to questions. While you don’t want to arrive at every occasion with a script of possible questions, it can be a good exercise to reflect on the things about which you are genuinely curious. When attending a conference networking event, you may be interested in hearing about individuals’ career paths, learning about their research, gaining their advice, etc. In developing questions, focus on ones that are open-ended, where the response requires more than a yes or no. You might ask, “Which conference sessions are you most interested in attending?” Maybe that seems unimportant to you or even a bit superficial, but hearing about the other individual’s interest might inspire you to attend a session you would not have initially chosen. As the conversation unfolds, so will the opportunities to guide the conversation toward more meaningful topics, and you might next ask, “What research projects are you currently working on?”
Practice. It is likely that you have attended interview preparation and practice sessions but far less likely that you have attended a small talk training. This is not your fault. My plea to my fellow career development practitioners is this: If we know that many individuals approach small talk with feelings of discomfort or dread, and we also recognize that it is an important skill that leads to positive career outcomes, then we need to actively train and create opportunities for our students and postdocs to practice small talk in low-stakes settings. Consider building small talk into your interview preparation offerings, add a small talk learning module to an upcoming campus networking event, collaborate with your campus’s English language learning program to incorporate small talk activities and reinforce the many places and spaces where your students and postdocs are already engaging in small talk. An example would be when a student comes in for an appointment and asks, “How was your weekend?” By asking they might learn, for instance, that you were recently in Miami, a city on the top of their list of places to visit. In this exchange you could draw attention to how the student effectively engaged in small talk, reinforcing that it is a skill they already possess.
Know what topics not to lead with. In the U.S. cultural context, it is safe to say that you would not want to lead small talk with questions about politics, religion, finances, health or overly personal topics. Aspects of these topics might be categorized as sensitive or controversial and can create tension and lead to misunderstanding. Through engaging in small talk, you should be building a foundation of connection that can facilitate greater openness toward engaging in more meaningful topics. That said, maybe you are at the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting—in that context, it would be common for the small talk to include politics. The setting and context can serve to guide the topics and direction of the small talk.
In academia, where emphasis on depth and scope of knowledge is highly valued, small talk can be easily viewed as a burden and overlooked as a necessary competency. But by applying a few small talk communication strategies, you will find that it can open doors and enhance career success. If you have yet to do so, embrace small talk as a skill worth developing, and get out there and chitchat. The effects on your professional life could be both profound and long-lasting.
Kay Gruder is the associate director of graduate student and postdoc career programs and services at the University of Connecticut. She is a member of the Graduate Career Consortium, an organization providing an international voice for graduate-level career and professional development leaders.
