There was a time when enhancement was the sector’s watchword.
Under the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), concepts like educational gain captured the idea that universities should focus not only on assuring quality, but on improving it. Teaching enhancement funds, learning and teaching strategies, and collaborative initiatives flourished. Today, that language has all but disappeared. The conversation has shifted from enhancement to assurance, from curiosity to compliance. Educational gain has quietly declined, not as an idea, but as a priority.
Educational gain was never a perfect concept. Like its cousin learning gain, it struggled to be measured in ways that were meaningful across disciplines, institutions, and student journeys. Yet its value lay less in what it measured than in what it symbolised. It represented a shared belief that higher education is about transformation: the development of knowledge, capability, and identity through the act of learning. It reminded us that the student experience was not reducible to outcomes, but highly personal, developmental, and distinctive.
Shifting sands
The shift from HEFCE to the Office for Students (OfS) marked more than a change of regulator; it signalled a change in the state’s philosophy, from partnership to performance management. The emphasis moved from enhancement to accountability. Where HEFCE invested in collaborative improvement, OfS measures and monitors. Where enhancement assumed trust in the professional judgement of universities and their staff, regulation presumes the need for assurance through metrics. This has shaped the sector’s language: risk, compliance, outcomes, baselines – all necessary, perhaps, but narrowing.
The latest OfS proposals on revising the Teaching Excellence Framework mark a shift in their treatment of “educational gain.” Rather than developing new measures or asking institutions to present their own evidence of gain, OfS now proposes removing this element entirely, on the grounds that it produced inconsistent and non-comparable evidence. This change is significant: it signals a tighter focus on standardised outcomes indicators. Yet by narrowing the frame in this way, we risk losing sight of the broader educational gains that matter most to students, gains that are diverse, contextual, and resistant to capture through a uniform set of metrics. It speaks to a familiar truth: “not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts”.
And this narrowing has consequences. When national frameworks reduce quality to a narrow set of indicators, they risk erasing the very distinctiveness that defines higher education. Within a framework of uniform metrics, where does the space remain for difference, for innovation, for the unique forms of learning that make higher education a rich and diverse ecosystem? If we are all accountable to the same measures, it becomes even more important that we define for ourselves what excellence in education looks like, within disciplines, within institutions, and within the communities we serve.
Engine room
This is where the idea of enhancement again becomes critical. Enhancement is the engine of educational innovation: it drives new methods, new thinking, and the continuous improvement of the student experience. Without enhancement, innovation risks becoming ornamental: flashes of good practice without sustained institutional learning. The loss of “educational gain” as a guiding idea has coincided with a hollowing out of that enhancement mindset. We have become good at reporting quality, but less confident in building it.
Reclaiming the narrative of excellence is, therefore, not simply about recognition and reward; it is about re-establishing the connection between excellence and enhancement. Excellence is what we value, enhancement is how we realise it. The Universitas 21 project Redefining Teaching Excellence in Research-Intensive Universities speaks directly to this need. It asks: if we are to value teaching as we do research, how do we define excellence on our own terms? What does excellence look like in an environment where metrics are shared but missions are not?
For research-intensive universities in particular, this question matters. These institutions are often defined by their research outputs and global rankings, yet they also possess distinctive educational strengths: disciplinary depth, scholarly teaching, and research-informed curricula. Redefining teaching excellence means articulating those strengths clearly, and ensuring they are recognised, rewarded, and shared. It also means returning to the principle of enhancement: a commitment to continual improvement, collegial learning, and innovation grounded in scholarship.
Compass point
The challenge, and opportunity, for the sector is to rebuild the infrastructure that once supported enhancement. HEFCE-era initiatives, from the Subject Centres to the Higher Education Academy, created national and disciplinary communities of practice. They gave legitimacy to innovation and space for experimentation. The dismantling of that infrastructure has left many educators working in isolation, without the shared structures that once turned good teaching into collective progress. Reclaiming enhancement will require new forms of collaboration, cross-institutional, international, and interdisciplinary, that enable staff to learn from one another and build capacity for educational change.
If educational gain as a metric was flawed, educational gain as an ambition is not. It reminds us that the purpose of higher education is not only to produce measurable outcomes but to foster human and intellectual development. It is about what students become, not just what they achieve. As generative AI reshapes how students learn and how knowledge itself is constructed, this broader conception of gain becomes more vital than ever. In this new context, enhancement is about helping students, and staff, to adapt, to grow, and to keep learning.
So perhaps it is time to bring back “educational gain,” not as a measure, but as a mindset; a reminder that excellence in education cannot be mandated through policy or reduced to data. It must be defined and driven by universities themselves, through thoughtful design, collaborative enhancement, and continual renewal.
Excellence is the destination, but enhancement is the journey. If we are serious about defining one, we must rediscover the other.
When education leaders describe their institutions as being in “existential crisis” or on a “wartime footing,” you know that something important is happening.
A new report, “Securing educational excellence in higher education at a time of change,” from Wonkhe and Advance HE, based on roundtable discussions with 11 institutional leaders, 15 principal fellows of Advance HE, and three student representatives held in March 2025, explores institutional interpretation of and responses to change, and asks what measures should be taken to secure educational excellence for what could be quite a different future.
While institutions are understandably focused on managing their immediate pressures, with, in some cases, institutional survival at stake, sustainability means little without the long-term mission of inclusive, high-quality learning that prepares students for their future lives. While financial security would help, the changes higher education is navigating require a deeper consideration of how institutions make decisions, deploy expertise, and engage their communities.
The report maps four critical tensions that leaders are navigating across the political, economic, social and technological domains: public trust versus sector autonomy; public good versus private return on investment; traditional academic community versus new student models; pace of technological change versus institutional capacity. A fifth tension emerges from this complex environment: a need for distributed leadership that allows for a deep knowledge of the issues versus clear lines of accountability for decisions. These tensions play out daily in everything that higher education institutions do.
A wave of change
In the political dimension, higher education is implicated in broader losses of confidence in institutions. Though not technically public services, universities occupy a distinctive position in British civic life: historically connected to the state, still partly publicly funded, yet operating with considerable autonomy. That hybrid status leaves higher education uniquely vulnerable to simultaneous public and policymaker scrutiny.
Higher education institutions are not insulated from the broader political landscape. Student representatives in the research raised questions about institutional awareness: “Universities believe that students are exempt from the effects of public austerity…they believe we are creating a community of highly educated people, therefore they cannot fall for the tricks and stories that the media or certain political parties are trying to tell.”
The economic tension is similarly complex. Universities are expected to deliver public benefits without reliable public funding, creating what one participant called a “competing interest” space where higher education struggles for resources against health and compulsory education. Meanwhile, students increasingly question whether their investment yields genuine value. “Students are being taught how to meet learning objectives, but they’re not being taught how to transfer the skills that they get during their time at university, or sometimes it feels like they’re not even being taught the skills that they need just by meeting the learning objectives,” one student representative observed.
Principal fellows echoed some of this anxiety: “Students, particularly those from a widening participation background, can put generational money into getting an education which then doesn’t give them a job.” When the compact between investment and outcome seems to break down, trust may fracture, not just between students and institutions but also between society and the higher education project.
Socially, traditional higher education campus communities are under pressure, with students increasingly time-poor, working to afford their studies, and many commuting rather than living on campus. Participants observed that many students approach higher education more transactionally – not necessarily because they’re mercenary, but possibly because they’re exhausted. As one principal fellow observed, “student” seems to have shifted from being a core identity to something people do alongside other things.
Meanwhile, technology raises a host of strategic questions, not only in mustering the “right” response to generative AI but also in confronting how the pace of technological change reshapes the collective imaginary of how humans and machines interact in physical and digital spaces. This has implications for curriculum and pedagogy, equity and inclusion, and infrastructure and resources.
Staff communities appear to have fractured, too. Professional services are “somewhere else in the university,” quick informal conversations have disappeared, and academics feel “fed up and tired and exhausted.” One principal fellow described what they saw as a vicious cycle: “We do not have communities in our universities anymore, and that then impacts the students as well…we don’t have engagement from the students. But also we don’t have engagement from the academics, because they’re in a mood all the time.”
This fragmentation has strategic implications. When communities fragment, institutions may lose the collective capacity to sense problems, develop solutions, and sustain change. Everyone risks becoming reactive rather than proactive, protective rather than collaborative.
Change as a capability
Rather than seeking solutions or silver bullets, our conversations explored the institutional capabilities required to navigate these complex tensions and map out a sustainable way forward.
One key insight emerging was about the diversity and richness of knowledge and expertise held within institutions that may not be routinely accessed in efforts to think about the future. Small executive teams may struggle to retain a grip on every aspect of the changing landscape or simply become bogged down in maintaining the day-to-day flow of decisions that keep institutions running. Under this kind of pressure, it might not be surprising that, as one principal fellow put it, “Leaders often talk too much and listen too little.”
The report suggests leaders need to become curators of inclusive processes rather than authorities on every challenge. This would require the confidence to admit when situations are difficult and to seek help – a cultural shift that, if modelled from the top, could potentially reduce pressure on others to hide their struggles.
Student representatives echoed this sense that efforts to consult or engage, if not well conceived, can sometimes be more alienating than empowering. One student leader suggested involving students in shaping the collective understanding of problems from the beginning, at which their experience and knowledge are most likely to make a meaningful contribution, rather than asking student representatives to comment on pre-developed expert solutions. The same principle could apply to higher education staff and stakeholders.
There were also clear themes of the need for authenticity when professing an appetite for change and a pragmatic approach to resourcing it. Participants noted that institutions advertise for “innovators” and “change agents” but may not truly want them, or don’t adequately support them when they arrive. Change might require investment: stable contracts, professional development, and time for pedagogic innovation. “You can’t shift pedagogy if you don’t create time,” observed one principal fellow.
In the technological domain, where there may be a belief that the issues are fundamentally about resourcing and retaining technical expertise, part of the question has to be about how technology reshapes staff and student experience and sustains or fragments human connection. One principal fellow observed that higher education’s “killer service” might be personal connection, not consumer-grade content production in an attention economy. However, delivering that would require investing in people, not just platforms.
A question of purpose
Among education leaders, there was a real recognition that higher education staff are “the most precious resource,” as one put it. Yet the changing landscape for higher education seems to be broadening the range of possible purposes for higher education, along with the range of stakeholders who feel entitled to a view about what educational excellence looks like.
It is not hard to see how this changing dynamic can alienate academics working in disciplines who may perceive some of their core “knowledge stewardship” values and purposes as being under threat from political, economic, social, and technological changes in the external landscape driving different expectations of higher education.
With an unknowable future, the answer is less about seeking certainties to cling to as about finding collective ways to navigate uncertainty. That might open up some uncomfortable propositions: that higher education’s purpose itself may need rearticulating; that trade-offs between competing goods must be explicitly managed; that excellent pedagogy might require resource investment even when budgets are tight; and that sustainable change may emerge more from dialogue than from executive decision-making.
The full report repays careful reading, not just for its PEST analysis framework, which could help guide your own institutional conversations about change, but for the candour of participants grappling with genuine complexity. Higher education may face a “pivot point” – though the sector’s breadth, diversity, and expertise remain a considerable strength. Weathering the changes here right now and those on the horizon will depend to no small degree on institutional leadership capability to draw on that expertise to build a shared and collectively owned sense of educational excellence.
In an effort to address a deep deficit caused by rising costs, declining international enrollment and flat state funding, University of Nebraska–Lincoln officials have proposed merging or cutting a slew of programs. But one proposal has sparked particular outrage—within the university and beyond: the plan to ax the educational administration department.
If the plan goes through, faculty members and students worry the state will be left without a key pipeline to fill leadership roles at local schools and colleges, particularly in rural areas. The University of Nebraska–Lincoln is the only university in the state that offers a Ph.D. program in educational leadership or higher education, which has a distinct scholarly focus, while Ed.D. programs and master’s degrees to train education leaders can be found elsewhere.
“It’s hard for me to imagine the flagship university in a state does not offer a program to prepare future principals, future superintendents, future leaders of colleges and universities,” said Crystal Garcia, an associate professor and Ph.D. coordinator in the department. Eliminating the department would be “really doing a disservice to education as a whole in the state of Nebraska.” She noted the department is “incredibly impactful,” serving 316 current and incoming graduate students.
Administrators have proposed nixing five other academic programs as well: community and regional planning; earth and atmospheric sciences; landscape architecture; statistics; and textiles, merchandising and fashion design. The plan would potentially retain the master’s degree program in educational administration but rehouse it elsewhere.
Through these cuts, the university aims to reduce the budget by $27.5 million, in part by eliminating 58 roles—17 from the educational administration department, including tenured and tenure-track positions. University officials also proposed two department mergers and budget cuts to the College of Engineering and the College of Arts and Sciences, amid other cuts to administrative and staff expenses.
The proposal will now be considered by the Academic Planning Committee, a group of faculty, staff and students. Members of affected programs can make their case before the committee in live-streamed hearings, and the public can weigh in through a feedback form. Then, the APC will come out with recommendations the chancellor can take or leave. If the chancellor decides to move forward with the proposed cuts, the issue will come before the Board of Regents in December.
Elizabeth Niehaus, a professor in the educational administration department, said faculty were stunned by the news and are preparing to defend the department to the committee—and the Board of Regents if need be. She and other faculty members believe the department is thriving.
The proposed cut was “quite honestly shocking, because we are a strong department with great students, great faculty, with a national reputation, folks who have been winning awards for teaching and research,” Niehaus said. “So, we did not see that coming.”
The Decision-Making Process
The university’s executive team undertook “a strategic, data-informed and holistic review of all academic programs,” said Mark Button, UNL’s executive vice chancellor.
The review weighed a variety of metrics, he said, including student success outcomes—such as retention rates and degree-completion rates over a five-year period—the ratio of student enrollments to faculty members, and demand for programs as measured in student credit hours and students joining majors.
Administrators also drew on metrics for research success used by the Association of American Universities; the university is seeking to regain membership in the organization, which it lost in 2011. Those measures include book publications, research citations and awards and fellowships. Administrators also compared programs to similar programs at other public AAU institutions, Button said, and considered more qualitative factors, like whether a program was distinctive in the state. The metrics were shared with college deans and then department chairs in May.
Button said the metrics used to review the academic programs reflected priorities already in the university’s strategic plan and the criteria used for past budget reductions. Education administration was among the departments that “didn’t perform as well,” he said.
Faculty members argue the process lacked transparency; they didn’t know until a day before the proposal came out that the department was on the chopping block. They say their specific questions have gone unanswered, including which particular measures caused them to fall short and whether the pandemic years were contextualized in the data.
“We were reduced to a single number that definitely does not reflect the depth and breadth of what we do and our contributions to the field, to the university, to the state,” Niehaus said of the scoring process.
The decision felt so at odds with how the department sees itself that associate professor Sarah Zuckerman said she wondered if it was being targeted for its outspoken faculty members. Zuckerman, who serves as president of the university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said other members of the department are also active in the organization, as well as in Advocating for Inclusion, Respect and Equity, a faculty coalition focused on diversity issues.
“It gives me a little bit of a nauseous feeling,” Zuckerman said.
Button argued it’s “definitively not true” that the proposed cuts target outspoken departments. He said the proposal involved “very painful decisions.”
“I probably can’t underscore enough just how difficult this budget-reduction process is for our entire university community and for everyone who’s committed to an outstanding land-grant, flagship, Big Ten university here in Nebraska,” Button said. “I share the sense of pain and grief that everyone on our campus is going through now.”
If the cuts become a reality, tenured and tenure-track professors will have a year’s notice of their termination and the university has promised to develop teach-out plans for students. But students don’t have the details of those plans, and some said the uncertainty makes them ill at ease.
Korrine Fagenstrom, who is participating in the online Ph.D. program focused on higher ed administration from Montana, said she doesn’t know what she’s going to do.
Four years into her program, she doesn’t want to leave, she said, but “I don’t know what it would look like to stay—I don’t know that anybody does.”
“The idea of the program getting eliminated at my final hour is terrifying,” said Kathryn Duvall, a third-year student in the Ed.D. program. “I have made sacrifices to my family. I have made sacrifices to my own personal life and dedicated years to getting my education. And this program has spent years pouring into me and developing me as a researcher, as a writer, as an educator, as a leader.”
She also worries on a “macro level” that education in the state will suffer without the leadership training UNL provides.
“Eliminating a program like this is eliminating foundational training that produces equitable educational opportunities in our society,” Duvall said.
The Bigger Picture
University officials argue that other offerings in the state, such as Ed.D. programs at University of Nebraska–Omaha or small private universities, can fill the same needs as UNL’s educational administration programs.
But K–12 superintendents, who generally have doctorates, need more—not less—access to the affordable, high-caliber training public institutions like UNL historically provide, said Mónica Byrne-Jiménez, executive director of the University Council for Educational Administration. The proposal to cut the department has garnered national attention, because it’s an unusual move for a flagship campus or a university with a Research-1 Carnegie classification, she added.
“It’s nothing I’ve seen before,” Byrne-Jiménez said, noting most R-1 universities boast strong K–12 and higher ed leadership programs. “We don’t want it to become a national trend.”
Cheryl Holcomb-McCoy, president and CEO of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, said that while UNL is a “unique case,” she has seen a growing number of education schools or colleges merge with other programs over the last decade. The Iowa Board of Regents also approved plans last week to end the University of Iowa’s graduate and doctoral programs in elementary education, secondary education, special education and science education.
Byrne-Jiménez said such programs may be extra vulnerable at a time when Americans are questioning the value of higher education and schools are “hyperscrutinized.” Educational administration programs also tend to attract smaller cohorts, she said, because a select few want to go into education leadership roles. She fears their size, combined with national skepticism, makes them susceptible to budget cuts. But she believes these programs have an outsize effect on the long-term success of state residents that needs to be considered.
“From an external perspective, it looks like these are small, sort of niche programs that might not be generating a lot of money for the university,” she said. But “the impact is great.” At UNL, “those 300 students are going to go out to 300 schools and 300 communities.”
From learning gain to educational gain, the concept is appealing for its emphasis on understanding how students grow and develop over time, and the extent to which higher education institutions can make robust claims about their roles and contributions.
However, the Office for Students (OfS) left the definition and measurement of educational gain to individual providers to decide for themselves, which left the sector with a multitude of definitions. In the absence of a clear, shared definition of and approach to educational gain, the sector has tended to default to what is most easily measured.
Yet, an over reliance on student outcome metrics (such as the National Student Survey, continuation/completion or Graduate Outcome data) reduces the indicators of student development into just numbers. More concerningly, this approach meant student groups with small numbers may be lumped together or even excluded in various statistical analyses. When we focus on lived experience as headline statistics, the nuances are swept away.
For individual institutions, a context-specific relevant approach makes sense, reflecting their own goals, priorities and practical considerations. But as a sector, including for the OfS, such freedom makes national comparison difficult if not impossible, and we revert to readily accessible and available outcome data.
Yet, educational gain must not only capture cognitive progress, but also the broader and holistic developments such as confidence and belonging.
The sector would benefit from a shared but flexible frame of reference for educational gain, which advocates for a diverse approach to evidence student growth over time.
A multi-dimensional approach to educational gain
Informed by the foundations of learning gain, this new paper proposes a multi-dimensional model of educational gain through three interrelated domains: cognitive and metacognitive, personal and affective, and social and cultural. Drawing on educational, psychological and sociological perspectives, these domains recognise the different aspects of student development, which also foregrounds the importance of longitudinal data from both qualitative and quantitative methods.
A multi-dimensional approach appreciates the student experience across the agency-structure spectrum. It provides an overarching frame of reference that enables institutions to tailor the specific approach as appropriate for their contexts. There will be differences across the sector in how institutions apply these in practice, but if the three domains (cognitive and metacognitive, personal and affective, and social and cultural) are broadly shared and operated as a thematic proxy across the sector, then we are at least in a position to explore how different institutions have collectively explored those dimensions.
For example, for cognitive and metacognitive development, it is conceivable that TASO’s Access and Success Questionnaire (ASQ) is adopted nationally to provide sector-wide comparable data with use value within and across institutions. In parallel, it is also conceivable to run a longitudinal qualitative study that unpacks how students articulate, reflect on and discuss their cognitive and metacognitive development.
Similarly, quantitative and qualitative methods can explore the extent to which students grow in confidence, resilience and self-efficacy, or whether they expand their social capital, sense of belonging or broader development as global citizens.
A multi-dimensional approach offers a unified lens for understanding educational gain that recognises sector benchmarks as well as local narratives. Without such a multi-dimensional view, the sector risks defaulting to established metrics that do not capture the full breadth of gains students achieve during their higher education.
What institutions can do
Short, funded pilot projects – supported by modest capacity-building grants – would give staff the space to test these methods before it is rolled out more widely. Contextually relevant reflective tasks could be strengthened and encouraged across programmes to encourage students to engage more critically with their own development. Crucially, it is important to ensure that any evidence gathered is conceptually robust and grounded in relevant theories of student progress and gains, for example: cognitive and metacognitive development, personal and affective growth, and social and cultural development. National-level benchmarks can be used effectively alongside the richness of context-specific data and evidence collected over time at the institutional level – reconciling national comparability with institutional distinctiveness.
What next?
If educational gain – and variations of it – is part of any next assessments, then the OfS should really be more explicit about what it expects from institutions. The ‘test’ from TEF 2023 to give providers the freedom to set their own criteria may be well-intended, but it served limited value for the sector, and presumably for the regulators themselves. A broad, flexible guiding principle or framework might provide the necessary coherence, preferably one that invites theoretical and methodological foundations in addition to the practical and pragmatic.
Fall semesters are just beginning, and the companies offering three leading AI models—Gemini by Google, Claude by Anthropic and ChatGPT by OpenAI—have rolled out tools to facilitate AI-enhanced learning. Here’s a comparison and how to get them.
Each of the three leading AI providers has taken a somewhat different approach to providing an array of educational tools and support for students, faculty and administrators. We can expect these tools to improve, proliferate and become a competitive battleground among the three. At stake is, at least in part, the future marketplace for their products. To the extent educators utilize, administrators support and students become comfortable with one of the proprietary products, that provider will be at an advantage when those students rise to positions that allow them to specify use of a provider in educational institutions, companies and corporations across the country.
Anthropic, the company that makes the series of Claude applications, announced on Aug. 21 “two initiatives for AI in education to help navigate these critical decisions: a Higher Education Advisory Board to guide Claude’s development for education, and three AI Fluency courses co-created with educators that can help teachers and students build practical, responsible AI skills.”
The board is chaired by Rick Levin, former president of Yale and more recently at Coursera. Anthropic notes in the announcement, “At Coursera, he built one of the world’s largest platforms for online learning, bringing high-quality education to millions worldwide.” The board itself is populated with former and current leading administrators at Rice University, the University of Michigan, the University of Texas at Austin and Stanford, as well as Yolanda Watson Spiva, who is president of Complete College America. Anthropic says the board will “help guide how Claude serves teaching, learning, and research in higher education.”
The three AI Fluency courses that Anthropic co-created with educators are designed to help create thoughtful practical frameworks for AI integration:
“AI Fluency for Educators helps faculty integrate AI into their teaching practice, from creating materials and assessments to enhancing classroom discussions. Built on experience from early adopters, it shows what works in real classrooms. AI Fluency for Students teaches responsible AI collaboration for coursework and career planning. Students learn to work with AI while developing their own critical thinking skills, and write their own personal commitment to responsible AI use. Teaching AI Fluency supports educators who want to bring AI literacy to their campuses and classrooms. It includes frameworks for instruction and assessment, plus curriculum considerations for preparing students for a more AI-enhanced world.”
Earlier last month, Google unveiled Guided Learning in Gemini: From Answers to Understanding: “Guided Learning encourages participation through probing and open-ended questions that spark a discussion and provide an opportunity to dive deeper into a subject. The aim is to help you build a deep understanding instead of just getting answers. Guided Learning breaks down problems step-by-step and adapts explanations to your needs—all to help you build knowledge and skills.”
The Google Guided Learning project offers additional support to faculty. “We worked with educators to design Guided Learning to be a partner in their teaching, built on the core principle that real learning is an active, constructive process. It encourages students to move beyond answers and develop their own thinking by guiding them with questions that foster critical thought. To make it simple to bring this approach into their classrooms, we created a dedicated link that educators can post directly in Google Classroom or share with students.”
“We’re offering students in the U.S. as well as Japan, Indonesia, Korea and Brazil a free one-year subscription to Google’s AI Pro plan to help make the most of AI’s power for their studies. Sign-up for the free AI Pro Plan offer.
Try new learning features in Gemini including Guided Learning, Flashcards and Study Guides. And students and universities around the world can get a free one-year subscription to a Google AI Pro plan.
AI Mode in Google Search now features tools like Canvas, Search Live with video and PDF uploads.
NotebookLM is introducing Featured Notebooks, Video Overviews and a new study panel; it’s also now available to users under 18.
And to help students get the most out of all these new features, we’ve announced Google AI for Education Accelerator, an initiative to offer free AI training and Google Career Certificates to every college student in America. Over 100 public universities have already signed up. We’re also committing $1 billion in new funding to education in the United States over the next three years.”
That brings us to OpenAI, which announced ChatGPT Study Mode on July 29, 2025. Noting ChatGPT’s overall leadership and success, OpenAI added, “But its use in education has also raised an important question: how do we ensure it is used to support real learning, and doesn’t just offer solutions without helping students make sense of them? We’ve built study mode to help answer this question. When students engage with study mode, they’re met with guiding questions that calibrate responses to their objective and skill level to help them build deeper understanding. Study mode is designed to be engaging and interactive, and to help students learn something—not just finish something.”
“Interactive prompts: Combines Socratic questioning, hints, and self-reflection prompts to guide understanding and promote active learning, instead of providing answers outright. Scaffolded responses: Information is organized into easy-to-follow sections that highlight the key connections between topics, keeping information engaging with just the right amount of context and reducing overwhelm for complex topics. Personalized support: Lessons are tailored to the right level for the user, based on questions that assess skill level and memory from previous chats. Knowledge checks: Quizzes and open-ended questions, along with personalized feedback to track progress, support knowledge retention and the ability to apply that knowledge in new contexts. Flexibility: Easily toggle study mode on and off during a conversation, giving you the flexibility to adapt to your learning goals in each conversation.”
I encourage readers to visit each of the sites linked above to become familiar with the different ways Anthropic, Google and OpenAI are approaching providing support to educational institutions and individual instructors and learners. This is an opportunity to become more familiar with each of the leading AI providers and their apps. Now is the time to become experienced in using these tools that collectively have become the foundation of innovation and efficiency in 2025.
HEPI Director Nick Hillman reviews Reforming Lessons: Why English Schools Have Improved Since 2010 and How This Was Achieved by Nick Gibb and Robert Peal.
On Tuesday, 9 September 2025, HEPI will be hosting the launch of the OECD’s flagship Education at a Glance report. Book a place (in person or online) here.
This is the second book on education in a row that I have reviewed on the HEPI website that comes from a right-of-centre perspective. The previous review (of a book by the President of the New College of Florida) garnered some pointed attacks underneath – ‘No doubt we’ll soon be seeing articles offering a “more balanced” perspective on Putin and Orban’s records in office’. So let me start by noting HEPI has also run many reviews (by me and others) of books written by left-of-centre authors as well as centrist authors, such as Sam Friedman and Aaron Reeve, Simon Kuper, Francis Green and David Kynaston, Melissa Benn, and Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin.
Let me also note that we are always on the lookout for reviews of recent books that are likely to be of interest to HEPI’s audience, irrespective of where on the political spectrum the authors of the books in question or – indeed – the reviewers sit. When we started running book reviews on the HEPI site many years ago, they tended to receive less engagement than other output, but that has changed over the years and they are often now among our most-read pieces. We hope this remains true on our brand new website. So the door is wide open. Come on in.
Now down to business. Reforming Lessons is a defence of the changes wrought by the long-standing and thrice-appointed Minister for Schools, Nick Gibb, and to a lesser extent his boss Michael Gove, co-written by Gibb himself. The other author is Robert Peal, who was one of a group of young state-school teachers (often, like Peal, powered by Teach First) who made up the advancing phalanx for the school reforms that were implemented by the Coalition and subsequent Conservative Governments. (John Blake, the Office for Students’s Director for Fair Access and Participation was another member of this front line and merits a mention in the book, as was Daisy Christodoulou, who has contributed a Foreword and who features multiple times.)
At the risk of further brickbats, it would be absurd for HEPI to have ignored this particular book at this particular time, for it is currently a huge talking point among educationalists. But is not just about education; it is also a book about the practice of politics. As the authors themselves write, it is an account of ‘the virtues of a subject-specialist minister driven by conviction in a specific cause rather than personal ambition.’ It fulfils this brief very well indeed, so it should be read far beyond the education world, especially by aspiring ministers in any field where they want to make a difference. But, and I do not mean this to be in any way rude, I suspect it was not – in one important sense – all that hard for Gibb and Peal to make their case.
This is because the key international data on school performance, which come from the OECD’s comparative PISA (the Programme for International Student Assessment), show England forging ahead, including against other parts of the UK, between 2009 and 2022. So Gibb and Peal had a secure evidence base on which to build their story.
We may argue that PISA is not a perfect measure: it tests only a small number of disciplinary areas and to a fairly basic level of knowledge and it has not always been completed the same way (sometimes on paper and sometimes on screen), but it is better than anything else we have when it comes to comparing school systems – and infinitely better than anything we have in higher education. So anyone who wants to shoot down the book’s central claim that Nick Gibb succeeded as a Minister will struggle to find equally robust performance data for their argument – though they could presumably focus on other evidence such as on an apparent narrowing of the curriculum (though Gibb and Peal get their defence on this in first – see pages 123 and 124).
Near the start, the book takes a look at how any education changes begun in 2010 had to be extremely cost-effective – cost-cutting or else free – given the dire fiscal position which led every major political party to promise drastic spending cuts at that year’s general election. Gibb and Peal also paint a picture of the ineffectiveness and wastefulness of the expensive centralised initiatives based on existing orthodoxies that preceded the Coalition. The multi-billion pound Building Schools for the Future programme was perhaps the archetype for, as Gibb shows, tens of millions of pounds were spent on building individual schools with open-plan classrooms where staff struggled to teach and pupils struggled to learn. Another challenge during the 2000s is that schools were overwhelmed with bureaucracy: in 2006/07 alone, we are told, there were around 760 missives to schools from Whitehall and quangos – four-per-day for the whole school year.
Yet Nick Gibb is far from being a free-for-all libertarian right-winger. He is, rather, someone who wants to use the power of the state to drive policy, including how to teach reading (synthetic phonics) as well as how to shape other aspects of the school curriculum. It is easy to see how this approach could have gone wrong but Gibb’s primary goal is always to follow the evidence as he sees it, and I cannot be the only parent who was amazed by how quickly their children started to read during their initial school years in the second half of the 2010s. Gibb has given more thought to schooling than any other modern politician and he rejects many of the ideas of his colleagues as much as those from the political left: he did not favour a wave of new grammar schools, he did not want GCSEs to be replaced by O-Levels and he opposed Rishi Sunak’s Advanced British Standard.
The book might begin and end somewhat immodestly and uncollegiately by reminding readers that many commentators picked out education as the one and only really big success of the Coalition and Conservative years, yet this is not by any stretch of the imagination a selfish book. Nick Gibb shows how his worldview was built upon teachers like Ruth Miskin, academics like ED Hirsch and others – even his researcher Edward Hartman gets a namecheck (or rather two) for introducing him to Hirsch. He shows how his agenda was carried forward by people like Hamid Patel, Katharine Birbalsingh and Jon Coles.
Political colleagues like Michael Gove and David Cameron are given credit for changing Whitehall’s approach to schooling. The triumvirate of advisers, Dominic Cummins, Sam Freedman and Henry de Zoete all receive praise, as does Nick Timothy for his stint in Number 10 as Theresa May’s Joint Chief of Staff. Andrew Adonis garners the most praise of all for starting ‘the revolution we undertook whilst in office’, and Kenneth Baker is lauded for getting the successful City Technology Colleges (the forerunners of academies) off the ground in the 1980s. Gibb and Peal note there have been ‘squabbles’ between Conservatives and Lib Dems over who designed the Pupil Premium policy but they do not join in, concluding instead that ‘we should celebrate that it was jointly pursued and agreed upon by the Treasury’.
There is high praise even for the man who temporarily displaced Gibb as the Minister for Schools, David Laws, especially for the design of the school accountability measure Progress 8 as well as for Lord Nash, who oversaw academies and free schools from the House of Lords. Gibb admits he did not agree with Nicky Morgan, who replaced Michael Gove as the Secretary of State for Education in 2014, on pushing ‘character education’ as a discrete concept but he excuses her on the grounds that ‘she had been transferred to Education from the Treasury with no notice, so never had the luxury of time I had enjoyed to read up on education philosophies.’
The tales from Gibb’s period as a backbench MP and then Shadow Minister also remind us that the most effective Ministers have typically learnt their briefs in the years before they take office rather than on the job. They then stay in post long enough to make a difference (or, in Gibb’s case, do the job more than once). Even for bold reforming ministers, like Gibb and Gove, good policy tends to be patient policy. In contrast, many of Gibb’s predecessors as the Minister for Schools (who include the current Minister for Skills, Jacqui Smith, who did the job in 2005 to 2006) were not in post for long enough to make a major sort of difference. Gibb’s account of his time in office also serves to remind us that it is wrong to think effective ministers must have worked in the field they are overseeing before entering Parliament: Gibb was an accountant, not a teacher, just like David Willetts, the well-respected Minister for Universities and Science during the Coalition, was a civil servant rather than an academic or scientist.
The book is peppered by illustrative and illuminating anecdotes. The one I found most shocking is about a visit Nick Gibb made in the mid-1990s to a school in Rotherham, where he was fighting a by-election: a headteacher ‘explained how she had completed an “audit” of her school library, removing any old-fashioned books that simply conveyed information.’ (A few years later, Tory party HQ abolished their library altogether, so it was not just schools that fell down this hole.) The second most shocking anecdote, at least to me, concerns the first draft of the rewritten National Curriculum for primary schools: ‘when the first draft of the curriculum was sent out for informal consultation amongst maths subject associations, it returned with all 64 mentions of the word “practice” expunged from the document.’ The funniest anecdote is one about Gibb visiting a successful academy that had converted from being an independent school: ‘On my train up to Yorkshire, I saw a pupil’s tweet expressing disappointment to find out the politician visiting her school was not Nick Clegg, as she had been led to believe, but instead “some random” called Nick Gibb.’
Personally, I dislike the language used by those who talk of an educational ‘blob’, not least because it paints all educationalists in the same negative light. Gibb dislikes the term too, and he was uncomfortable with his political colleagues throwing it about. He is pro-teachers and there were always some classroom teachers who held out against the knowledge-light ‘progressivist ideology’ even at its height. Gibb’s reforms were designed to dilute the educational orthodoxy of unions and quangos and to give power to trusted headteachers as well as to multi-academy trusts instead – the mantra was ‘high autonomy and high accountability’. His core goals were to find the best resources and teachers, then to free school leaders to make the biggest differences they could and finally to encourage others to emulate them, especially via high-performing multi-academy trusts. If Blair’s mantra was ‘education, education, education’, Gibb’s was ’emulation, emulation, emulation’.
But while rejecting the ‘blob’ term, the book does help one to understand how the moniker came to gain such currency. Gibb tells a story, for example, of how, as an MP and a member of the Education Select Committee, he was summoned to the ‘salubrious offices in Piccadilly’ of the Qualification and Curriculum Authority. Once there, the Chief Executive and Chairman demanded Gibb stop asking parliamentary questions about their work. It was an error of immense proportions – perhaps if they had known Gibb had circulated anti-communist propaganda in Brezhnev’s Russia, they would have had a better idea of how tough he is under the polite demeanour. Either way, the scenario served to remind Gibb not to back down in battles once he became a minister.
One surprise in the book is the degree to which Gibb thinks his reforms have deep roots and are here to stay. He makes a persuasive case for this, especially in the Conclusion, when he notes how embedded and successful some multi-academy trusts now are. Yet his book also recounts how Scotland and Wales have in recent years moved in the opposite direction to England, downplaying knowledge in their school curricula (and suffering the consequences in international comparisons). So one-way travel is surely not guaranteed.
Keith Joseph talked of a ‘ratchet effect’ in British politics and it might be too early to tell if the Gibb / Gove reforms are locked in or whether the pendulum could now swing back. What I saw after the 2024 general election from my vantage point of being a long-standing Board member of the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) gives me less confidence that educational policy is now settled. Despite Gibb’s belief his reforms will last, even he notes in passing the recent attempt to water down the freedoms enjoyed by academies. What is taught in schools, and how, will surely continue to be fervently debated and it is why HEPI has sought to focus minds in higher education on the important Curriculum and Assessment Review under Professor Becky Francis.
The book is all about the pipeline to higher education but it is not really about higher education except near the end, where the authors take a look at teacher training. Those running university education departments were among the people who did not take Nick Gibb seriously while in Opposition or in Government and they too paid the price for it:
‘Of all the different sectors of the education establishment, university education faculties were – by a stretch – the most difficult with which to work. … the main message I received whenever I visited university education faculties was, as Jim Callaghan had been told 40 years previously, “keep off the grass”. Meetings I had usually consisted of being talked at for 90 minutes in a boardroom with no appetite or opportunity for discussion. If I, as a minister, showed any interest in what they thought, they would mistily invoke the virtues of “academic independence”, and insist the government had no place stepping on their hallowed turf.’
At the very end of the book, Gibb bemoans the fact that, when it comes to ‘the evidence revolution in English education’, ‘university education faculties have been – with one or two exceptions – notable only by their absence’. And when it comes specifically to school teaching, Gibb regards universities as part of the problem rather than the solution. (So perhaps we should not be surprised that Gibb and Peal do not mention the short-lived attempt by Theresa May’s Government to get universities to sponsor academies.) As Universities UK prepare to release new research on public perceptions of higher education institutions, I was left wondering whether there might be lessons for how the higher education sector can best engage with Ministers and officials.
While Twitter / X may often be a sewer today, Gibb argues that various education bloggers and tweeters (often from the political left) played a vital role in shoring up his reforms, for example in helping Michael Wilshaw sort out Ofsted, who we are told ‘succeeded where Chris Woodhead could not.’ Gibb may point the finger of blame at those who pushed the ‘progressivist ideology’ that he has fought against but when it comes to A-Level grade inflation, for example, he does not limit his criticism to the Blair / Brown Governments, also complaining about his Conservative predecessors. Yet despite the ferocious attacks he was subjected to as a Minister, Gibb does not respond in kind, confident instead that his policies rested on evidence from the UK and overseas rather than polemic.
This is a lengthy book and a very very good one, though it does not stop me wanting to know more about what Gibb thinks in one or two areas. For example, we surely do not talk enough about demographics in education. Yet it was the growing number of young people that was part of the reason why the Treasury and others accepted lots of brand new schools called ‘free schools’, just as it was the falling number of school leavers prior to 2020 which helped persuade the Treasury to remove student number caps for undergraduates in England. Gibb does acknowledge the impact of changes to the birth rate in boosting his agenda, but personally I would like to have read more than the single paragraph on page 155 about it.
Churchill is said to have remarked, ‘history will be kind to me, for I intend to write it’. I kept thinking of this as I was reading the book, so it is perhaps too much to expect a deep dive into educational areas that the Conservatives failed to fix in their 14 years in charge. For me, these are: the educational underperformance of boys relative to girls, which does not merit any specific mentions; the current crisis in the supply of new teachers, which gets less than a page of dedicated text; and post-COVID truancy rates, which gets a paragraph and a couple of other fleeting mentions. But Nick Gibb is, and will rightly remain, one of the most important Ministers of recent decades – and to think he never even made it into the Cabinet.
Email remains one of the most effective ways for colleges and universities to connect with their audiences. Unlike social platforms that limit reach through algorithms, email marketing for educational institutions provides a direct line to prospects, parents, students, alumni, and partners, people who have already chosen to hear from you. It’s measurable from start to finish, integrates easily with CRMs and student information systems, and can be automated to deliver timely, relevant messages.
The numbers back it up: across industries, email consistently produces one of the strongest returns on investment of any channel. In higher education, the impact is even greater when schools combine clean data with thoughtful segmentation, personalization, and creative storytelling. In practice, email often becomes the foundation of a recruitment strategy, supporting everything from initial outreach to alumni engagement.
This guide brings together proven email marketing best practices for educational institutions. Alongside examples and trusted resources to help your team build campaigns that not only perform but also feel authentic and meaningful to the people you’re trying to reach.
Struggling with enrollment and retention?
Our email marketing services can help you generate more leads!
Where Email Fits in the Student Journey
Email plays a role at every stage of the student journey, from the first moment of discovery through to lifelong alumni engagement. What makes it so effective is its ability to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time.
Awareness: Introduce programs, highlight scholarships, and showcase campus life with engaging stories that spark curiosity.
Consideration: Share degree guides, student experiences, faculty spotlights, and invitations to virtual or in-person events.
Decision: Provide deadline reminders, financial aid instructions, advisor booking links, and follow-up checklists that help prospects commit with confidence.
Onboarding & Retention: Support new students with orientation details, academic advising reminders, wellness resources, and career services updates that strengthen their connection to your institution.
Alumni & Advancement: Keep graduates engaged with mentorship opportunities, continuing education offers, impact reports, and giving campaigns that showcase the value of staying involved.
Example in practice:The University of Alberta has built a structured email journey for international prospects, connecting them with advisors and surfacing key requirements at each stage of the process. This ensures that students receive timely, relevant information tailored to their current stage in the decision-making process.
Best Practices for Higher Education Email Marketing
To make email marketing for educational institutions truly effective, schools need more than just frequent sends; they need strategy, structure, and respect for their audience. The best-performing campaigns are built on trust, relevance, and timing.
That means starting with a clean, permission-based list, segmenting by intent, and delivering value at every step of the journey. Each best practice below focuses on how colleges and universities can move beyond “batch and blast” tactics to create meaningful, high-ROI conversations with students, parents, alumni, and partners.
1. Build a Permission-Based, High-Intent List
The strength of your email marketing starts with the quality of your list. Buying addresses might look like a shortcut, but it usually leads to poor engagement and deliverability issues. Instead, focus on capturing leads through owned, value-driven channels.
Program pages with downloadable guides, open house registrations, scholarship calculators, and career snapshots are all proven ways to attract high-intent prospects. Keep sign-up forms short, just name, email, and one preference field, then use progressive profiling to enrich data over time.
Example: George Brown College attracts prospective students by offering downloadable program guides in exchange for email sign-ups. Because students self-select the guide they want, the college immediately knows their area of interest and can trigger tailored follow-up campaigns. This approach builds a fully permission-based list where every contact has explicitly indicated their intent, making subsequent outreach more relevant and effective.
Segmentation is the most consistent way to boost engagement and conversions in higher ed email marketing. Instead of sending broad blasts, divide your audiences by lifecycle stage, program interest, geography, or even behaviour, for example, attending a webinar or abandoning a form. This allows every recipient to receive content that feels timely and relevant. Segmentation also prevents fatigue by cutting down on irrelevant sends, which in turn protects your sender reputation and keeps unsubscribe rates low.
How can segmentation improve the effectiveness of email marketing for higher education? Segmentation makes emails more relevant, which increases engagement. For example, international prospects segmented by country can receive updates on visas and housing, while domestic students see local funding options. Segmenting by lifecycle stage, program, and behaviour helps improve click-throughs and leads to better-qualified student interactions.
Example:Humber College’s international portal structures content by region and need, ensuring students see information on study permits, housing options, and support services tailored to their home country. This kind of geo-segmentation can be mirrored in email journeys, for instance, sending region-specific pre-arrival checklists or visa guidance, so that communications land with stronger relevance for each subgroup of students.
True personalization goes deeper than inserting a first name in the subject line. In higher education, it means dynamically adjusting content blocks based on program interest, geography, or behaviour.
For example, prospective Nursing students should see different resources than prospective Business students. International applicants may need tuition estimates in local currency or immigration guidance. Behavioural triggers, like a reminder to finish an application, show prospects you’re paying attention to their journey.
Why is personalization important in higher education email marketing? Personalization helps students see themselves at your institution. Tailoring emails by program, start term, or action, such as reminding them of an unfinished application, makes communication feel relevant and timely. This reduces fatigue and unsubscribes while guiding students toward conversion more effectively than generic messages.
Example:Arizona State University has invested in dynamic email content that highlights degree options, campus resources, and next-step reminders based on each student’s profile data. ASU’s own email marketing guidelines encourage the use of personalized fields and scripting for tailored messaging, ensuring that outreach feels individually relevant and helpful rather than generic.
4. Write Subject Lines and Previews That Earn the Open
Subject lines and preview text are the most decisive factors in whether an email gets opened. In higher education, a few consistent principles stand out:
Specificity: call out the program or event directly (“Early Childhood Education: Virtual Info Session Tomorrow”).
Urgency and utility: use time-sensitive reminders, but avoid spammy tactics (“Last 48 hours for residence priority”).
Length: keep subject lines to 45–50 characters, and use preview text to complete the thought and front-load value.
Testing: run A/B tests where possible: subjects, preheaders, and sender names (e.g., “Admissions at Seneca”) are all worth experimenting with. Emoji can work sparingly for student audiences.
Example:The University of Arizona’s marketing team advises keeping subject lines concise (30–50 characters) and imbued with a sense of urgency, while still indicating the email’s content. Their guidelines echo what many have found: clear, direct subject lines (often including deadlines or event details) tend to lift open rates, because recipients immediately grasp the email’s value.
In a nutshell, what are the best practices for creating engaging subject lines in higher education email marketing?Keep subject lines clear, specific, and under 50 characters. Highlight benefits like deadlines, outcomes, or events, and use preheaders to expand the message. Test frequently with A/B experiments, and consider humanized sender names (e.g., “Admissions at [School]”) to increase open rates without relying on gimmicks.
5. Design Mobile-First and Accessible
Most students and parents first open emails on their phones, so mobile-first design isn’t optional. Use responsive templates, 16-pixel body text, and tappable CTAs with enough space to avoid errors. Break content into scannable blocks with headings and subheads, and avoid image-only buttons.
Accessibility should be built in: add alt text, maintain contrast ratios, and caption videos. Keeping one clear CTA helps prevent distraction while making the path forward obvious. Load times matter, too. Opt for system fonts, compressed images, and videos hosted externally.
Example:The University of Toronto’s Future Students portal provides a good model for digestible, mobile-friendly content blocks. Information is organized in concise sections and bullet points that mirror best practices for responsive email design. By structuring content for quick scanning on a small screen, U of T ensures that key messages (from program highlights to “Apply Now” links) remain prominent and actionable even on mobile devices.
How often you email matters as much as what you send. A thoughtful cadence keeps your audience engaged without overwhelming them. Consider these practical benchmarks:
Prospects: 1–2 emails per week; increase frequency near application deadlines or events, then cool down.
Applicants/Admitted Students: Send transactional updates and personalized nudges; shield them from generic blasts.
Enrolled Students: A weekly digest from student affairs or the registrar is usually sufficient, plus urgent communications when needed.
Alumni: monthly updates with stories, impact reports, and targeted appeals tied to affinity or giving campaigns.
Example:The University of Rochester balances its email frequency by audience: it sends all current students, faculty, and staff a brief daily bulletin for campus-wide announcements, but for undergraduates, it also delivers a focused weekly newsletter highlighting only the most important deadlines and updates for the coming week. This approach keeps students informed and on track (e.g., keeping current on scholarship deadlines or add/drop dates) without inundating them with multiple emails per day, illustrating how strategic timing and pacing can improve engagement.
The best emails guide students toward small, progressive steps that build confidence and commitment. Think of calls-to-action (CTAs) as a series of micro-conversions leading to the big one: enrollment.
Early stage: “Download the Business Degree Guide.”
Mid stage: “Register for the Sept 12 Virtual Info Session.”
Late stage: “Finish Your Application” or “Book a 1:1 with Admissions.”
Example: Concordia University encourages one-on-one engagement by making it easy for prospects to connect with recruitment advisors. In their outreach and on their website, Concordia invites prospective students to “Speak with a recruiter” and provides direct contact links for regional advisors.
By embedding advisor contact/booking links in recruitment emails, they effectively turn email into a two-way channel, and prospects can immediately take the next step of scheduling a conversation, which is often a key conversion on the path to enrollment. This kind of CTA (e.g., “Book a 1:1 Advising Appointment”) helps move students from interest to action at the decision stage.
Automation ensures no student falls through the cracks. It also frees staff time by replacing one-off sends with structured flows. At a minimum, schools should build:
Welcome or nurture series by program cluster (3–5 emails over 10–14 days).
Event workflows: registration confirmation → reminder emails (24 hours and 2 hours before) → post-event follow-up with recording and next step.
Application rescue: reminders for incomplete applications, missing documents, or deposits.
Example:The University of Georgia’s admissions office uses automated “incomplete application” emails to prompt action from applicants. About 10–15 days after a student applies, if any required materials are still missing, UGA’s system sends a notification to alert the student. This kind of trigger-based outreach (in UGA’s case, coupled with a status portal for real-time updates) helps increase completion rates by nudging students at the right moment. Ensuring more prospects finish their applications and none are unknowingly left behind due to missing paperwork.
Testing makes email performance predictable. Without it, you’re guessing. To get reliable insights, follow a structured method:
Hypothesis: define what you’re testing and why (e.g., “Clearer subject line → higher open rate”).
Minimal variable: test one change at a time: subject, CTA wording, or design. Not everything at once.
Sample & duration: send to enough recipients for statistical significance, and let the test run its course.
Centralize learnings: record results in a shared log and bake winners into future templates.
This discipline helps schools turn experimentation into ongoing optimization, rather than one-off guesswork.
Example: Arizona State University’s email marketing team bakes A/B testing into its processes and training. In fact, ASU’s internal Marketing Academy offers specific sessions on email A/B testing best practices. By systematically experimenting, for instance, testing whether an email from “Admissions at ASU” versus a personal advisor name yields a higher open rate, or which subject line phrasing drives more clicks, universities like ASU turn anecdotal hunches into data-backed decisions. The result is a cycle of learning where each campaign performs better than the last, based on real audience insights.
A great email program doesn’t just send, it learns. Schools should define KPIs at each stage of the student journey and connect systems so results tie back to outcomes that matter.
Top of funnel: track deliverability, open rates (adjusted for privacy changes), and click-through rates (CTR).
Mid-funnel: measure landing-page engagement, event registrations, and advisor bookings.
Bottom of funnel: monitor application starts and completions, offers accepted, and deposits paid.
Lifetime value: go further with retention term-to-term, alumni engagement, and giving participation.
Tools make this possible. Google Analytics 4 allows schools to set and track conversion goals across web and email touchpoints. Marketing automation platforms like HubSpot, Mailchimp, and HEM’s Mautic provide email-level reporting, lifecycle attribution, and integration with CRMs or student information systems.
The real power comes when those metrics are connected—so you can see not just who opened, but who enrolled. That’s how email proves its ROI in higher education.
Example: UMass Amherst provides a powerful case study in data-driven email marketing. After consolidating campus communications onto a single platform, they now rigorously track email performance and outcomes. In 2022, UMass separated its email sends into transactional vs. commercial categories to better gauge effectiveness. The university sent 6.7 million marketing (commercial) emails with a 61% open rate and only a 0.10% unsubscribe rate, about half the industry benchmark.
These granular metrics (including year-over-year improvements in opens and clicks) are tied back to student engagement and enrollment outcomes. By monitoring and sharing such results, the UMass team can conclusively demonstrate email ROI in higher education, for instance, showing that automated, targeted campaigns directly led to more applicants completing their files and more students registering for classes
Deliverability, Privacy, and Compliance Essentials
Even the best-designed email is wasted if it never reaches the inbox. To protect deliverability and ensure compliance, schools need to focus on three pillars: technical health, consent, and governance.
Authenticate your domain with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Align subdomains for bulk mail so your institution sends with a verifiable identity.
Maintain list hygiene by removing hard bounces automatically and applying “sunset rules” for long-inactive contacts. This keeps the sender’s reputation strong.
Comply with Canadian Anti-Spam Law (CASL): capture express opt-in, include your institution’s physical mailing address, and provide a one-click unsubscribe.
Offer preference centres so subscribers can opt out of specific program streams rather than unsubscribing from all communications.
Monitor sender reputation and complaint rates across platforms. Coordinate centrally across departments to avoid overlap that leads to over-messaging.
Schools that treat deliverability and compliance as core practices, not afterthoughts, protect both their brand and their audience’s trust, while ensuring every message has a fair chance of being read.
Content Strategy: What to Send (And When)
The most effective email marketing calendars are tied to the academic cycle. By planning content around what matters most to students at each stage, schools can stay relevant, reduce last-minute scrambles, and guide prospects and current learners smoothly from interest to enrollment, and beyond.
September–October: Focus on discovery. Send “Explore Programs” series, scholarship primers, and fall open house invitations to capture interest early in the cycle.
November–December: Support applications. Share step-by-step application checklists, portfolio preparation guides, and alumni career stories that reinforce outcomes.
January–February: Address financial and career considerations. Feature financial aid tutorials, co-op or internship spotlights, and “Ask an Advisor” live chats to build trust and reduce barriers.
March–April: Drive urgency. Countdown emails for application deadlines, residence selection reminders, and campus life reels or shorts work well here.
May–June: Transition from admission to enrollment. Focus on onboarding with orientation sign-ups, registrar instructions, and personalized next-step communications.
July–August: Provide last-mile support. Send guidance on IDs, transit, and housing, plus international arrival instructions to prepare students for day one.
A calendar like this ensures that your emails are not just timely, but also aligned with the emotional and practical needs of your audience throughout the year.
Turning Best Practices Into Results
Email remains one of the most powerful tools available to higher education marketers, but only when strategy and technology work hand in hand. The best practices outlined here are: permission-based lists, segmentation, personalization, accessibility, automation, and compliance. Ensure every message is not just delivered but resonates with the right audience at the right time.
This is where Higher Education Marketing (HEM) makes the difference. With deep sector expertise, we help schools design and execute email strategies that align with recruitment, retention, and advancement goals.
Central to this is our use of Mautic CRM, an open-source higher education email marketing automation platform customized for educational institutions. Mautic allows institutions to manage campaigns, segment audiences, automate journeys, and integrate seamlessly with student information systems, all while keeping data governance and compliance front and center.
By combining best-practice strategy with the flexibility of Mautic CRM, HEM enables institutions to run smarter, more personalized campaigns that drive measurable ROI across the student lifecycle. The result is simple: stronger engagement, higher conversion rates, and a more connected experience for every student, from prospect to alumni. Do you need help crafting an effective marketing strategy for student recruitment for your institution? Contact HEM for more information.
Struggling with enrollment and retention?
Our email marketing services can help you generate more leads!
Frequently Asked Questions
Question:How can segmentation improve the effectiveness of email marketing for higher education? Answer: Segmentation makes emails more relevant, which increases engagement. For example, international prospects segmented by country can receive updates on visas and housing, while domestic students see local funding options. Segmenting by lifecycle stage, program, and behaviour helps improve click-throughs and leads to better-qualified student interactions.
Question: What are the best practices for creating engaging subject lines in higher education email marketing? Answer: Keep subject lines clear, specific, and under 50 characters. Highlight benefits like deadlines, outcomes, or events, and use preheaders to expand the message. Test frequently with A/B experiments, and consider humanized sender names (e.g., “Admissions at [School]”) to increase open rates without relying on gimmicks.
Question: Why is personalization important in higher education email marketing? Answer: Personalization helps students see themselves at your institution. Tailoring emails by program, start term, or action, such as reminding them of an unfinished application, makes communication feel relevant and timely. This reduces fatigue and unsubscribes while guiding students toward conversion more effectively than generic messages.
The departure and replacement of school principals represents one of the most significant organizational changes within educational institutions, creating ripple effects that permeate every aspect of school operations. This phenomenon, increasingly prevalent in contemporary education systems, deserves thorough examination for its profound impact on institutional effectiveness, academic achievement, and organizational stability.
When a principal exits an educational institution, the immediate effects reverberate throughout the entire school system. The administrative vacuum extends far beyond mere personnel changes, as new principals invariably bring distinct leadership philosophies, strategic priorities, and management approaches that can fundamentally reshape the school’s operational framework. Current research in educational leadership suggests that schools typically require between three to five years to fully stabilize following leadership transitions, indicating that frequent turnover can trap institutions in continuous cycles of adjustment and reorganization.
The principal’s role transcends traditional administrative leadership, functioning as the cultural architect of the school community. During leadership transitions, the delicate fabric of established relationships between administration, faculty, and staff enters a period of uncertainty and realignment. The school’s cultural identity, carefully constructed through years of shared experiences and mutual understanding, often undergoes substantial transformation as new leadership implements alternative approaches to community building and professional collaboration. This cultural shift can significantly impact teacher motivation, student engagement, and overall school climate.
Academic program integrity and student achievement metrics frequently experience fluctuations during principal transitions. New leaders typically introduce fresh perspectives on curriculum implementation, instructional methodologies, and resource allocation strategies. While innovation and new approaches can catalyze positive change, frequent shifts in academic direction may disrupt educational continuity and student progress. Empirical studies have consistently demonstrated that schools experiencing frequent principal turnover often exhibit temporary declines in student achievement metrics, with particularly pronounced effects in high-poverty areas where stability serves as a crucial factor for student success.
The impact extends deep into stakeholder relationships and community partnerships. Parents, community organizations, and local partners must adapt to new leadership styles, communication protocols, and institutional priorities. The critical process of building and maintaining trust, essential for effective school-community partnerships, frequently requires renewal with each leadership change. This cyclical process can affect various aspects of school operations, from volunteer program effectiveness to community support for school initiatives and funding proposals.
Professional development trajectories and staff retention patterns often undergo significant changes during principal transitions. Different leaders may emphasize various areas of professional growth or implement modified evaluation systems, directly affecting teacher satisfaction and career advancement opportunities. Research indicates a strong correlation between principal turnover and increased teacher attrition rates, creating compound effects on institutional stability and educational continuity. This relationship suggests that leadership stability plays a crucial role in maintaining a consistent and experienced teaching staff.
The challenges of strategic planning become particularly acute in environments characterized by frequent leadership changes. Multi-year improvement initiatives risk interruption or abandonment as new principals implement different priorities and approaches. This instability can affect various aspects of school development, from technology integration plans to curriculum development initiatives, potentially compromising the institution’s ability to achieve long-term educational objectives and maintain consistent progress toward established goals.
Educational institutions can implement various strategies to minimize the negative impacts of principal turnover, including developing comprehensive transition protocols, maintaining detailed documentation of ongoing initiatives, creating strong distributed leadership teams, establishing clear communication channels during transitions, and building robust institutional memory through systematic record-keeping. These mitigation strategies prove essential for maintaining organizational stability and educational effectiveness during periods of leadership change.
The implications of principal turnover extend throughout the educational ecosystem, influencing everything from daily operations to long-term strategic initiatives. Understanding these complex dynamics becomes increasingly crucial for educational stakeholders, policymakers, and administrators in developing effective strategies to maintain institutional stability and educational quality during leadership transitions. As educational institutions continue to evolve in response to changing societal needs and expectations, the ability to manage leadership transitions effectively becomes paramount for ensuring consistent, high-quality education for all students.
This comprehensive analysis of principal turnover effects provides valuable insights for educational professionals, administrators, and policymakers working to create more stable and effective learning environments. The ongoing challenge lies in balancing the potential benefits of new leadership perspectives with the fundamental need for institutional stability and continuous educational improvement, all while maintaining focus on the ultimate goal: providing optimal learning opportunities for students in an ever-changing educational landscape.
Dr. Jason Richardson, Garden City Elementary School & the International University of the Caribbean
Dr. Jason Richardson is a Teacher Leader at the Garden City Elementary School in Savannah, Georgia and a Professor of Graduate Studies at the International University of the Caribbean (Jamaica). He holds a Diploma in Principalship from the National Leadership College of Jamaica, Bachelor of Education from the International University of the Caribbean, Master of Science in Counseling and Consulting Psychology from the International University of the Caribbean, Educational Specialist Degree and a Doctor of Education Degree in Leadership and Management from the William Howard Taft University.
Latest posts by eSchool Media Contributors (see all)
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Fulbright Program in Korea, one of the oldest and most robust binational educational exchanges in the world.
Coinciding with this milestone is the 30th anniversary of South Korea’s landmark 5.31 Education Reform – a policy blueprint that sought to transform the nation’s education system into a more open and globally competitive ecosystem.
The Fulbright legacy in Korea illustrates how long-term bilateral cooperation has scaffolded national education strategies and fostered intellectual diplomacy across generations.
The strategic alliance between the Republic of Korea and the United States has been underpinned by an enduring educational partnership. Education has always been more than a soft-power tool in this relationship; it has served as a central pillar for shared values, talent development, policy learning, and institutional co-evolution.
At a time when the Indo-Pacific region is undergoing profound geopolitical, technological, and demographic shifts, reaffirming the educational ties between Korea and the US is a strategic imperative.
Fulbright Korea: peacebuilding through knowledge
Established through a 1950 agreement, Korea became one of the first countries to join the Fulbright Program, though the Korean War delayed its launch until 1960. Revised agreements in 1963 and 1972 created the Korean-American Educational Commission (KAEC) and introduced joint funding, making Korea one of 49 nations to co-finance the programme with the US.
Since then, Korea has often matched or exceeded US contributions. Today, KAEC awards over 200 grants annually to Korean and American participants, supporting a global network of Fulbright scholars and more than 7,600 Korean alumni across diverse fields.
Fulbright Korea exemplifies educational diplomacy at its best. Graduate fellowships support future policymakers and scientists, while English teaching assistants serve across Korea’s provinces, enhancing not just language acquisition but also cross-cultural understanding.
These initiatives echo the lifelong learning ambitions embedded in Korea’s broader educational reforms, showing how international exchange and domestic innovation can reinforce each other. These long-standing programs have strengthened Korea’s education system while fostering mutual understanding, helping to build enduring people-to-people ties that support bilateral cooperation.
Fulbright Korea exemplifies educational diplomacy at its best
The US also supports student mobility and academic advising in Korea through EducationUSA, housed at KAEC, which offers Korean students up-to-date information on American higher education. Korea continues to rank among the top sending countries of international students to the US, with over 43,000 enrolled in 2023/24, making it the third-largest sender.
While the Ministry of Education’s 2024 data reports 3,179 American students enrolled in Korean higher education, US study abroad figures suggest that nearly twice as many participate in programmes based in Korea. The US has also been recognised as a key partner in Korea’s Study Korea 300K Project, which seeks to host 300,000 international students by 2027.
Institutional transformation and globalisation
The 5.31 Education Reform, declared in 1995 amidst the waves of globalisation, aimed to modernise Korea’s education system through two core principles: globalisation and informatisation.
These pillars reshaped how universities operate, allowing for greater curricular flexibility, the introduction of credit banking and recognition of prior learning, and the rapid adoption of digital tools. Competitive government initiatives like Brain Korea 21 and, later, the University Restructuring Plan incentivised research output and global benchmarking.
Despite uneven implementation, the reform not only accelerated the internationalisation of Korean higher education but also deepened its ties with US institutions. By 2008/09, over 75,000 Korean students were enrolled in US higher education, placing Korea among the top sending countries globally.
Given its relatively small population, this figure represented the highest per capita rate of US-bound students in the world. At the same time, Korea became an increasingly attractive destination for American students, with study abroad numbers growing substantially over the past two decades, growing from 2,062 in 2008/09 to 5,909 in 2022/23.
Even before the 5.31 reform, US higher education institutions played a pivotal role. In the decades following the Korean War, American graduate programs served as critical training grounds for a generation of Korean scholars. These individuals returned not as passive recipients or brokers of foreign models but as active knowledge creators who adapted global ideas to local contexts, built research infrastructure, and mentored emerging academics.
This process of intellectual circulation laid the groundwork for Korea’s ascent in global university rankings and research productivity. Foundational initiatives such as the Minnesota Project and the US-supported establishment of KAIST in 1971 were emblematic of this transformation.
Transnational education and role of program providers
Transnational education has added new depth to Korea-US educational co-operation. The Incheon Global Campus, which hosts the Korean branches of five US universities, enables local students to earn US degrees without leaving the country.
These institutions bring American accreditation standards and pedagogical approaches into the Korean context, serving as important centres for cross-cultural learning and academic collaboration. Increasingly, they also function as supportive platforms for study abroad, facilitating intercultural engagement. Modest but meaningful forms of faculty and scholarly exchange further enrich these settings.
Not-for-profit organisations such as IES Abroad have also become indispensable facilitators of educational exchange. Marking its 75th anniversary in 2025 as well, IES Abroad shares a parallel legacy with Fulbright Korea in advancing international education.
Its recently established Seoul Center has already hosted over 220 US students, exemplifying the growing role of study abroad programme providers in fostering engagement with Korean society. By offering for-credit academic programmes, cultural and language immersion, and hands-on learning opportunities, these providers play a crucial role in sustaining the depth and accessibility of bilateral educational exchange.
Toward mutuality and innovation
Together, these developments have yielded significant accomplishments: a thriving academic pipeline, robust knowledge circulation, improved global rankings for Korean institutions, and a steady increase in intercultural literacy among students from both countries. Korean graduates with US degrees now occupy leadership roles in government, academia, and business. American students return with deeper cultural understanding, with many pursuing careers in diplomacy, education, or East Asia-focused industries.
However, challenges remain. Some observers have raised concerns about the asymmetrical flow of talent, particularly during earlier decades when “brain drain” seemed more plausible than circulation.
Others caution against over-Americanisation in curricula and institutional culture. Korea’s demographic decline and the rising cost of US education now pose additional obstacles to sustained exchange. National policy shifts, ideological realignments, and increasing public scrutiny of foreign involvement in higher education further complicate the outlook.
Reimagining educational diplomacy
The pressing challenges highlight the importance of rearticulating a shared vision for the future, particularly as the direction of bilateral commitments established under previous administrations continues to evolve.
Mutual investment in scholarship funds, stronger collaboration among diverse stakeholders within the broader international education field, more accessible hybrid learning models, and enhanced joint governance of transnational campuses can all help to future-proof the Korea-US educational partnership.
In 2025, as we commemorate 75 years of Fulbright Korea and IES Abroad, and reflect on 30 years since Korea’s 5.31 reform, it becomes evident that international exchange and domestic transformation are not separate trajectories but mutually reinforcing forces. Korea-US educational cooperation has evolved from aid-driven assistance to a platform for peer-to-peer growth and innovation.
If approached strategically, the next chapter of this relationship can not only address pressing policy challenges but also reimagine the purpose of education in a world increasingly defined by brittleness, anxiety, nonlinearity, and incomprehensibility.
ADL CEO Jonathan GreenblattThe National Education Association’s (NEA) executive committee has rejected a resolution passed by union members that would have severed ties with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), preserving access to educational materials on antisemitism and Holocaust education amid rising campus tensions.
The decision, announced Friday by NEA President Becky Pringle, came after the union’s Representative Assembly voted last week in Portland, Oregon, to cut ties with the civil rights organization over its characterization of campus protests related to the Gaza conflict as antisemitic.
“Following the culmination of a thorough review process, it was determined that this proposal would not further NEA’s commitment to academic freedom,” Pringle said in a statement. The rejection preserves educators’ access to ADL curricula and professional development programs that address antisemitism in educational settings.
The controversy highlights the complex challenges facing educational institutions as they navigate discussions about antisemitism, campus climate, and academic freedom in the aftermath of increased tensions following the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks and subsequent Gaza conflict.
The executive committee’s decision followed an unprecedented coalition effort, with nearly 400 Jewish organizations and dozens of elected officials urging the NEA to reject the boycott proposal. The coalition argued that excluding ADL materials would harm efforts to combat antisemitism in schools and marginalize Jewish educators and students.
“This resolution was not just an attack on the ADL, but a larger attack against Jewish educators, students, and families,” said a joint statement from ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, American Jewish Committee CEO Ted Deutch, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations COO Stephanie Hausner, and Jewish Federations of North America Executive Vice President Shira Hutt.
The Jewish leaders emphasized that the proposed boycott would have normalized “antisemitic isolation, othering, and marginalization of Jewish teachers, students and families in our schools,” even as teachers’ unions have limited power to dictate curriculum.
The debate reflects broader tensions on college and K-12 campuses nationwide, where Jewish students and faculty have reported increased incidents of antisemitism alongside pro-Palestinian advocacy efforts. The ADL’s annual reporting on antisemitic incidents has itself become a point of contention, with some progressive Jewish leaders questioning whether the organization conflates legitimate criticism of Israeli government policies with antisemitism.
Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, offered a nuanced perspective: “It’s possible to disagree with ADL without cutting off all engagement — which would undercut our shared goals of countering antisemitism and broader hate and bias.”
Pringle clarified that rejecting the boycott proposal was not an endorsement of “the ADL’s full body of work” but acknowledged the organization’s role in addressing rising antisemitism. She met with ADL CEO Greenblatt to discuss the union’s processes and reaffirm the NEA’s commitment to combating antisemitism.
