Over the past five years of conducting organizational capability assessments of higher education marketing and communications departments, my colleagues and I have interviewed hundreds of internal stakeholders. It’s the most fascinating aspect of the work, hearing directly from campus colleagues both inside and outside the department about their perspectives and experiences related to organizational life and departmental effectiveness.
Through these conversations, valuable insights have emerged thanks to longtime marcomm staff—those team members who have contributed 10 or more years of professional service to their departments. (Note: I use the term “marcomm” to reflect that a blended marketing and communications structure is the typical model in higher education. The nuance and complexity of marketing and communications as distinct but related functions are topics for another post.)
These insights, framed as reflection questions below, are especially relevant for leaders beginning a new senior role, such as a cabinet-level VP, CMCO or an executive director leading the marcomm function for an academic college or school.
Is “restructuring” an end or a means?
When longtime staff members discuss organizational structure changes, their healthy skepticism is palpable. They invariably associate these changes with leadership transitions. A “re-org” happened because there was a new VP (just as strategic plans often coincide with new presidents). The perceived impetus for change is simply having new leadership rather than any larger strategic purpose. We frequently hear some version of, “The structure changes and then eventually changes back with a different VP.”
I’d much rather staff members describe those structural changes as enabling their function to fulfill a more strategic role and more meaningfully advance the institution’s highest priorities. It’s a reminder to leaders that structure should follow strategy, so the task is to ensure that the strategy is clear, reinforced and reflected in decision-making.
Moreover, leaders should move beyond thinking in terms of discrete “restructures” or “re-orgs.” Organizational change isn’t a periodic event; top-performing departments are constantly adapting and evolving to best serve their guiding purpose amidst changing conditions.
What is the real value of institutional knowledge?
We undervalue institutional knowledge. Your longtime staff members possess deep institutional knowledge, which we unfortunately may dismiss as outdated or irrelevant. Instead, think of institutional knowledge as a source for critical context and sense making to help you navigate the road ahead and lead positive change.
In The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, Heifetz, Linsky and Grashow emphasize that “successful adaptive changes build on the past rather than jettison it.” The challenge for leaders lies in “distinguishing what is essential to preserve from their organization’s heritage from what is expendable.” Long-tenured staff members’ insights and institutional knowledge are invaluable in building this understanding.
As the authors note, “Successful adaptations are thus both conservative and progressive. They make the best possible use of previous wisdom and know-how. The most effective leadership anchors change in the values, competencies and strategic orientations that should endure in the organization.” New senior leaders, eager to deliver results or serve as change agents, may overlook this crucial balance.
What does upskilling require of the organization?
The responsibilities of longtime staff members have likely evolved significantly since their initial hiring. New or different types of work are needed as marcomm’s scope expands, audience preferences shift and technologies emerge. Growing these competencies is a shared responsibility requiring genuine organizational commitment. The onus cannot rest solely on individual staff members. Upskilling or reskilling demands adequate time and resources—even when workloads are heavy and budgets are constrained.
Professional development funding is often the first casualty of budget reductions. But if the organizational approach to professional development has been mostly reactive, then we shouldn’t be surprised by the lack of budget prioritization. This ad hoc approach to professional development points to a larger issue: the absence of formalized talent management practices in marketing and communications.
Where can you build more intentionality into your organization’s efforts to recruit, develop, support and retain staff? Look to your central human resources team for guidance and learn from your colleagues in advancement, where larger and more mature advancement operations have dedicated talent management functions. Start small by operationalizing your department’s practices in a specific area such as orientation and onboarding. These focused efforts can create momentum for broader talent management initiatives.
Long-serving staff members serve as both historians and bridges to the future, stewarding institutional values while helping new executives thoughtfully evolve their organizations. When properly engaged and supported, these veteran team members can be catalysts in your efforts to build—or further build—a high-performing department that drives lasting institutional progress. I hope these reflection questions prompt ideas that help your marketing and communications department be people centered and future ready.
Rob Zinkan is vice president for marketing leadership at RHB, a division of Strata Information Group. He joined RHB in 2019 after more than 20 years in higher education administration with senior positions in marketing and advancement. He also teaches graduate courses as an adjunct in strategic communications and higher education leadership.
If progressive or even not-so-progressive Jewish students invited comedian Sacha Baron Cohen to their university to perform his riotous parody “In My Country There Is Problem,” with its call-and-pogrom chorus “throw the Jew down the well / so my country can be free,” would Cohen be allowed on campus? If the song were indeed sung, and a few humorless, unthinking listeners were distressed by the lyrics, or at least claimed to be, would the Jewish students face discrimination and harassment charges under the university’s disciplinary code?
Today, probably. Would they be found responsible for discrimination and harassment based on national origin? Again, probably. And what if a student band wished to parody the parody with a song titled something like, “Throw Chris Rufo Down the Well So My University Can Be Free”? Could the song be sung against the backdrop of students’ sensitivities and the reciprocated rage of today’s young conservative white men?
In her recently published opinion essay for Inside Higher Ed, Joan W. Scott skewered the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and its vice president for campus advocacy, Alex Morey, for condemning the American Association of University Professors. Scott’s criticism of Morey’s criticism goes like this: Morey lambasted AAUP president Todd Wolfson’s expression of “disappointment” over Donald Trump’s re-election, arguing that Wolfson’s explicit partisanship betrays the AAUP’s purported commitment to academic freedom. Scott countered that FIRE is a libertarian wolf donning academic freedom drag. FIRE, explains Scott, is “dedicated to the absolutist principle of individual free speech,” a principle that is “not,” Scott italicizes, synonymous with academic freedom. In turn, Scott elaborates on academic freedom as “individual and collective rights of faculty as they pursue the mission of higher education in a democracy.”
We agree with Scott that FIRE—with its many right-wing funding sources as Scott lists them—is unlikely to have our backs if and when the federal government comes to shut down diversity, equity and inclusion programs and cultural studies departments on campus (i.e., queer and Black studies). We respect, too, that Scott knows more about the history and purpose of academic freedom than we do.
And yet, we worry that the line she draws between free speech and academic freedom—the former ideological and libertarian, the latter true and good—cedes too much. Indeed, her distinction hands “free speech” over to the conservative groups championing their anti-educational causes under its banner, and her dismissal of free speech defenses as apologia for racism lets stand, unnuanced, the left-originating but now right-appropriated proposition that combative, controversial speech is necessarily harmful in an egalitarian university environment. It is the quick conversion of (at times highly provocative) political speech into hate speech that allows “from the river to the sea” to be branded as categorically harassing antisemitism—a conversion that would so quickly ban Jews from sending up antisemitism (“throw the Jew down the well”), ban musicians from joking about drowning Rufo or prohibit, for that matter, marginalized groups from reappropriating slurs to divest them of their injurious force.
In short, we think there is still good reason—several good reasons—for the academic left to defend speech, both as elemental to academic freedom and as a democratic value unto itself.
We and nearly every colleague we know have stories of students hastily claiming talk—talk of sex, Israel, Palestine and criticism of affirmative action—as intimidating, harassing or discriminating. It seems to us that a robust defense of academic freedom must include healthy skepticism, but not outright cynicism, of the proposition that words injure. Skepticism, not cynicism, because words may hurt people, further subordinate marginalized groups and erode democratic ideals. David Beaver’s and Jason Stanley’s recently published The Politics of Language draws on critical race and feminist theory to show how some speech acts—affective, nondeliberative and/or racist dog whistles—function to polarize and degrade.
But we also know, especially in the wake of spurious discrimination claims against campus activists and academics protesting Israel’s military campaigns, that conservative stakeholders are weaponizing the idea of words as weapons, alleging atmospheres of harassment to chill political speech—a project, we must concede, that the left paved the way for.
Indeed, around 2013, as trigger warnings gained traction on college campuses, the right repackaged “free speech” as the inalienable freedom of anyone to speak on any topic without consequence, especially if that consequence is the loss of a platform. Instead of drawing on the left’s history of free speech advocacy, scholars of “identity knowledges” centered attention on the moral wrongness of offensive speech and the intolerability of feeling unsafe. This shift left progressives defending feelings rather than ideas, collapsing political discord with dehumanization—or, as Sarah Schulman argues, conflict with abuse. Now, with free speech reduced to melodrama, even the Christian right claims to protect its constituents against “harm”—whether from critical race theory or drag shows—rendering the issue a conceit of the culture wars.
In his much-ridiculedop-ed for TheNew York Times published last year, linguist John McWhorter lamented that he and his students were unable to listen to John Cage’s silent “4:33” during class, as the silence would have been interrupted by the sound of student protests. The irony that McWhorter chided the protesters for impeding his students from appreciating Cage’s invitation to listen to “the surrounding noise” of the environs was not lost on McWhorter’s critics.
What was not commented on, though, was McWhorter’s contention that if a group of students had been shouting “DEI has got to die” with the same fervor with which they were shouting for Palestine’s self-determination, then the protests “would have lasted roughly five minutes before masses of students shouted them down and drove them off the campus. Chants like that would have been condemned as a grave rupture of civilized exchange, heralded as threatening resegregation and branded as a form of violence.”
Whether correct or not, McWhorter’s speculation is not baseless. We want to insist, though, that there are left, not just libertarian, grounds to defend, for example, a student protest against DEI initiatives. They include: respecting and celebrating the university as a space of open dialogue and debate; the possibility that you might learn something from someone with whom you disagree; the opportunity to lampoon, parody or otherwise countermand whatever worse-than-foolish statement the opposition is making; the opportunity, as John Stuart Mill taught us, to strengthen your own ideas and arguments alongside and against the ideas of others; and finally, avoiding the inevitable backlash of “the cancel,” whereby censored conservatives rebrand themselves as truth-telling victims of the “woke.”
Granted, some of these grounds for defending speech tilt more liberal or libertarian than pure left, whatever that means, but we nonetheless maintain that it is self-defeating for us to carry the banner for “academic freedom” while consigning “free speech” to the province of white grievance. This is especially true for those of us teaching queer and critical sexuality studies, where classrooms and related spaces of activism and dialogue are increasingly circumscribed, the harm principle ever more unprincipled. Consider the case of Aneil Rallin, who in 2022 was accused by Soka University of America of teaching “triggering” sexual materials to his students in a course called Writing the Body, and whose case—while taken up by FIRE—was met with little alarm from the academic left.
It also applies to those of us who still recognize satire, irony and social commentary in an age of breathtaking literalism. In 2011, the Dire Straits song “Money for Nothing” (1985) was temporarily banned from Canadian radio for its use of the f-slur, even though the term was intended as a commentary on working-class homophobia. The drive to censor and demonize without regard for social context has arguably gotten stronger in the years since.
From the recent historical record, it seems to us that the enforcement of bureaucratic speech restrictions often damages campus culture and democratic norms more than the speech acts themselves. Indeed, the better question than is X speech act harmful is, to crib from Wendy Brown, when—if ever and at what costs—are speech restrictions the remedy for injury?
Debating DEI programs, myths of meritocracy and so on is the stuff of academic freedom. A speech act like “DEI must die” is provocative, abrasive and worth publicly disparaging, but it is not the same as hate speech. Song parodies will not save us from the dark years ahead for public education, academic freedom and egalitarian pedagogies of all kinds. But our battle preparations demand standing up for, not surrendering, free speech.
Joseph J. Fischel is an associate professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Yale University.
Kyler Chittick is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta.
The United States Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., has shut down a dozen student affinity clubs to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive orders to eliminate federal funding for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and ensure that no member of the military “be preferred or disadvantaged on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, color, or creed,” The Washington Postreported.
The Asian-Pacific Forum Club, the National Society of Black Engineers Club and the Latin Cultural Club are among the campus groups ordered to shut down, according to a memo sent Tuesday from Chad Foster, deputy commandant at West Point, to the Directorate of Cadet Activities.
The memo orders all the identified clubs to “permanently cease all activities” and “unpublish, deactivate, archive or otherwise remove all public facing content.” It also orders the dozens of other clubs at West Point to “cease all activity” until they have been reviewed to ensure compliance with Trump’s executive orders and guidance from the Army and the Department of Defense.
Below is the full list of disbanded clubs, including some with decades-long histories at West Point, according to the Post:
The Asian-Pacific Forum Club
The Contemporary Cultural Affairs Seminar Club
The Corbin Forum
The Japanese Forum Club
The Korean-American Relations Seminar
The Latin Cultural Club
The Native American Heritage Forum
The National Society of Black Engineers (West Point chapter)
The Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers (West Point chapter)
The Society of Women Engineers (West Point chapter)
Even before President Donald Trump unleashed a flurry of executive orders involving higher education, college and university presidents expressed serious concerns about his possible impact on the sector and on their own institutions. That’s according to findings released today from Inside Higher Ed’s forthcoming 2025 Survey of College and University Presidents with Hanover Research.
More than half of presidents surveyed in December and early January—51 percent—at that point believed Trump’s second administration would have a somewhat or significant negative impact on the regulatory environment for higher education. Some 38 percent of respondents said they believed Trump would have a somewhat or significant positive impact on the regulatory environment, while the remainder expected his administration to have no impact. Male presidents were more likely than their female counterparts to express confidence in the Trump administration, with 42 percent of men responding that they expected an at least somewhat positive regulatory environment for the sector compared to 30 percent of women.
Drilling down into specific concerns, the vast majority of presidents—80 percent—indicated Trump would have a negative impact on DEI across higher education. On an institutional level, 60 percent said he would negatively impact DEI efforts at their own colleges and universities.
Presidents also expressed concerns about what Trump 2.0 would mean for public perceptions of higher education’s value, the climate for campus speech and the financial outlook for colleges and universities.
The latest edition of the annual survey of presidents, now in its 15th year, includes responses from 298 leaders from a mix of two- and four-year institutions, public and private nonprofit. It was administered after Trump was elected but before he took office. The findings below are focused exclusively on his new administration and the broader political environment. The full survey, covering a broad range of issues relevant to college leaders, is forthcoming.
Unpacking the Findings
Given the timing of the survey and the rapid-fire executive orders and other actions that have followed, which included a temporary freeze on federal funding that created uncertainty and alarm across the sector, some experts believe presidents would respond even more negatively now.
“I don’t think there’s any question that had this survey been done after Jan. 20, the numbers would be more negative than they were, with what we have seen since: the executive orders flowing out of the White House and funding freezes and just the chaos and uncertainty,” Michael Harris, a professor of higher education at Southern Methodist University, told Inside Higher Ed.
“The survey indicates that presidents had some sense of what was coming,” Harris said. But he noted their “failure of imagination” to realize how quickly Trump would act.
Already higher education is feeling the pressure on DEI, an area presidents anticipated would come under fire by the new administration.
One of Trump’s first executive orders, issued on Jan. 21, called on federal agencies “to enforce our longstanding civil-rights laws and to combat illegal private-sector DEI preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities.” It also tasked Trump’s attorney general and the education secretary with crafting guidance for universities on how to comply with the 2023 Supreme Court ruling that banned the consideration of race in admissions policies.
Universities have reacted in myriad ways to Trump’s attack on DEI. Last month the Rutgers University Center for Minority Serving Institutions canceled a virtual conference on apprenticeships at historically Black colleges and universities, and Michigan State University called off a lunch to celebrate Lunar New Year (but allowed other related events to go on).
According to the survey, 71 percent of respondents believe that Trump will have a negative impact on the climate for free inquiry and civil dialogue across higher education. But only 52 percent said their own institution would suffer those negative effects.
The majority of respondents—71 percent—also said Trump would have a negative financial impact on the sector. But at the institutional level, only 45 percent believe the same is true at their institution. And nearly a quarter of respondents believe he’ll positively affect their finances.
Harris views with skepticism the belief among many presidents that their institutions will fare better than the rest of the sector. He argues that presidents can be “blinded” by proximity to their institution, which makes them overconfident in its strength.
“I tend to believe the response around the industry more than the individual institution,” he said.
But Anne Harris, president of Grinnell College—and no relation to Michael—believes that presidents have a firm grasp on their community “and all of its complexity,” which helps them better understand how a situation may play out on campus. She said that the “direct impact of a federal policy is always going to be negotiated, diffused and maybe absorbed by the multiplicity of constituencies on a campus.”
While the new Republican president was the cause of concern for many respondents, presidents also expressed dissatisfaction with his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, last year.
In Inside Higher Ed’s 2024 survey of College and University Presidents, only 33 percent of respondents indicated satisfaction with the Biden administration’s record on higher education. Last year’s survey found that 41 percent of respondents were completely or somewhat dissatisfied with Biden, who left behind a mixed legacy on higher education. He was accused of leaving some promises unfulfilled while overreaching in other areas, such as student loan forgiveness.
Killing the Education Department
One of Trump’s campaign promises was to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, a process that he has already taken steps toward but that will likely face an uphill battle given that he would need congressional approval to shut it down, which Democrats have made clear they are unwilling to provide. Even with a Republican majority in the Senate, the move faces highly unlikely odds.
The majority of presidents surveyed disapprove of shutting down the department: 72 percent opposed the idea and 21 percent indicated uncertainty, while 8 percent voiced support for the effort. Presidents of private, nonprofit institutions were most likely to support the move.
Harris, the Grinnell College president, questions what role last year’s botched launch of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid played in draining support from the Department of Education, given the financial pressures felt by countless students, families and institutions.
“There are going to be very few presidents who are going to cheer what happened with FAFSA,” she said. “So maybe this is some FAFSA lack of confidence saying the Department of Education did not serve higher ed well with the FAFSA debacle last year. So why not try something else?”
Brad Mortensen, president of Weber State University, offered a similar perspective.
“It wouldn’t have surprised me if [that number] was higher, just given how rough of a time the Department of Education had in rolling out the new FAFSA,” Mortensen told Inside Higher Ed. “That had real impacts on all types of institutions across the country.”
Both presidents indicated that the programs housed in ED are more important than the department itself. They are more concerned about the continued flow of federal financial aid, for example, than where it comes from—whether that’s ED or the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
Ongoing Optimism
Concerns about Trump notwithstanding, other findings in the forthcoming full survey were positive—including the financial outlook at the institutional level, despite clear signs of strain across the sector. (Financial findings will be covered in depth as part of the full survey release.)
Some presidents believe that optimism comes with the job.
“College and university presidents are a funny lot. As I was applying for this job, I had a past president tell me, ‘Brad, you have to be smart enough to get the job and dumb enough to take it.’ I think by nature, we tend to be naïve optimists because it’s a job with a lot of challenges,” Mortensen said.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday banning transgender women from participating in women’s sports.
“The war on women’s sports is over,” he said. “With my action this afternoon, we are putting every school receiving taxpayer dollars on notice that if you let men take over women’s sports teams or invade your locker rooms, you will be investigated for violations of Title IX and risk your federal funding.”
The executive order, signed on National Girls and Women in Sports Day, declares that it’s “the policy of the United States to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports more broadly, as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and truth.” Under the order, the assistant to the president for domestic policy will bring together representatives of “major athletic organizations and governing bodies, and female athletes harmed by such policies, to promote policies that are fair and safe, in the best interests of female athletes.”
The president’s latest action builds on the GOP’s broader campaign to remove all recognition of transgender individuals from state and federal programs. On his first day in office, Trump signed a separate executive action declaring that there are only two sexes and banning federal funding for any program related to “gender ideology.” And House Republicans have passed a bill that would unilaterally ban trans women from competing in women’s sports. In nearly half of the country, trans women are banned from playing women’s sports at the K-12 or higher education level, but the order would take those bans nationwide.
Additionally, the order calls on the education secretary to prioritize “Title IX enforcement actions against educational institutions (including athletic associations composed of or governed by such institutions) that deny female students an equal opportunity to participate in sports and athletic events by requiring them, in the women’s category, to compete with or against or to appear unclothed before males.” (Federally funded K-12 public schools and colleges are required to comply with Title IX, which bars discrimination based on sex in educational settings.)
Charlie Baker, president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, told Congress recently that out of the more than 500,000 college athletes, fewer than 10 were transgender. The NCAA released a statement Wednesday that said, “The NCAA Board of Governors is reviewing the executive order and will take necessary steps to align NCAA policy in the coming days, subject to further guidance from the administration.”
As Trump spoke Wednesday, girls and women—including former University of Kentucky swimmer and anti-trans advocate Riley Gaines—stood behind him, often clapping in support.
After thanking them, the president turned back to face the rest of the East Room audience. He acknowledged the federal lawmakers, state attorneys general and governors in attendance, describing them as “friends of women’s sports.”
“My administration will not stand by and watch men beat and batter women,” he said. “It’s going to end and nobody’s gonna be able to do a damn thing about it because when I speak [I] speak with authority.” (Trump was referring to an Olympic gold medal–winning Algerian boxer whom some accused of being transgender; the boxer has publicly said she was born a woman.)
Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center, said in a statement that trans students do not pose a threat in sports and deserve the same opportunities as their peers.
“The far-right’s disturbing obsession with controlling the bodies, hearts, and minds of our country’s youth harms all students,” Graves said.
Education secretary nominee Linda McMahon attended the ceremony, though her confirmation hearing for the office has yet to be scheduled. In the meantime, the department is being led by a collection of acting officials and appointees, including Deputy General Counsel Candice Jackson, who described the president’s order as “a demonstration of common sense.”
“The President affirmed that this administration will protect female athletes from the danger of competing against and the indignity of sharing private spaces with someone of the opposite sex,” Jackson said in a news release. “The Department of Education stands proudly with President Trump’s action as we prioritize Title IX enforcement against educational institutions that refuse to give female athletes the Title IX protections they deserve.”
Other Republican lawmakers praised the order Wednesday, arguing it would ensure women and girls won’t be pushed to the sidelines.
But Representative Bobby Scott, a Democrat from Virginia and ranking member on the House education committee, was quick to oppose the order, calling it “yet another overreach by this administration” and saying its lack of clarity will further complicate what should be addressed by sports associations.
“Rather than address the real, urgent issues that students and families are facing every day, this administration continues to target vulnerable students—specifically transgender girls and women—with a shameless attempt to bully them,” he said in a statement. “They are willing to use the most vulnerable Americans as pawns in a political game.”
In “The Doctoral Dilemma” (Feb. 3, 2025), Inside Higher Ed reporter Johanna Alonso describes career coaching as a “cottage industry” of “gurus” that emerged to fill critical gaps in graduate training. As a career coach cited in the article, I was disappointed to see such an inaccurate and biased portrayal of my work.
Coaching is a professional industry with proven methods, tools, and credentialing provided by the International Coaching Federation (ICF). Coaching is distinct from “consulting,” and it’s an intentional, strategic step for anyone seeking to change careers. This is why Johns Hopkins University employs coaches as part of its Doctoral Life Design Studio. Yet, the article portrays these university-led coaching initiatives as legitimate, structured and holistic, while describing coaching outside of the university as an opportunistic “cottage industry.” Why frame the same service in two very different ways?
From our wide-ranging, 20-minute interview, Alonso only highlighted my hourly rate—$250/hour for a single one-to-one meeting—without any context. There is no mention of the benefits of career coaching, or whether universities like Johns Hopkins pay their coaches a similar rate. The monetary cost, presented in isolation, suggests exploitation. The reality? As a neurodivergent person, I find one-to-one meetings draining, so I’ve priced them to limit bookings. Instead, I direct Ph.D.s toward my free library of online content, my lower-cost group programs and my discounted coaching packages, all of which have helped Ph.D.s secure industry roles that double or triple their academic salaries. The article doesn’t include these details.
The most telling sign of the article’s bias is the use of the word “guru.” Why use a loaded term like “guru” instead of “expert” to describe career coaches? As I frequently remind my clients, language shapes perception. Ph.D.s are more likely to be seen as industry-ready professionals if they use terms like “multi-year research project” instead of “dissertation” or “stakeholders” instead of “academic advisers.” The same logic applies here—calling career coaches “gurus” trivializes our work, implying we are self-appointed influencers rather than qualified professionals. I’ll never forget the professor who once tweeted, “If life outside of academia is so great, why do alt-ac gurus spend so much time talking about it? Don’t they have better things to do?”
My response? “I wouldn’t have to do this if professors provided ANY professional development for non-academic careers.”
Because contrary to what the article claims, I didn’t start my coaching business because I wished there were more resources available to me. I started it because, after I quit my postdoctoral fellowship for an industry career, I spent untold hours providing uncompensated career support to Ph.D.s. For nearly two years, I responded to thousands of messages, created online resources, reviewed résumés and met one-to-one with hundreds of Ph.D. students, postdocs and even tenured professors—all for free, in my leisure time. Eventually, I burned out from the incessant demand. I realized that, if I was going to continue pouring my time into helping Ph.D.s, I needed to be compensated. That’s when I started my business.
Academia conditions us to see for-profit businesses as unethical, while “nonprofit” universities push students into a lifetime of high-interest debt. It convinces us that charging for expertise is predatory, while asking Ph.D.s to work for poverty wages is somehow noble. It forces us to internalize the idea that, if you truly care about something, you should sacrifice your well-being and life for it. But our time is valuable. Our skills are valuable. We deserve to be fairly compensated for our labor, inside and outside of academia.
Career coaching isn’t the problem. The real problem is that academia still refuses to take a critical look in the mirror.
Data analytics has become the cornerstone of effective decision-making across industries, including higher education marketing. As a school administrator or marketer, you’re likely aware that competition for student enrollment is fiercer than ever.
To stand out, leveraging data analytics can transform your marketing strategy, enabling you to make informed decisions, optimize resources, and maximize ROI. But what does data analytics mean in the context of higher education marketing, and how can you apply it to achieve tangible results? Keep reading to understand the impact of data analytics on your school’s marketing campaigns, some benefits you can expect, and how to implement them.
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The Significance of Data Analytics in Education Marketing
What is the role of data analysis in education marketing? Data analytics involves collecting, processing, and interpreting data to uncover patterns, trends, and actionable insights. In higher education marketing, data analytics enables you to understand your target audience—prospective students, parents, alumni, and other stakeholders—better and craft strategies that resonate with them.
Data analytics goes beyond tracking website visits or social media likes. It involves deep-diving into metrics such as application trends, conversion rates, engagement levels, and even predictive modelling to anticipate future behaviour. For example, analyzing prospective students’ journey from initial interaction with your website to applying can reveal opportunities to refine your marketing campaigns. Data analytics equips you to attract and retain the right students by more effectively addressing their needs.
Source: HEM
Do you need support as you create a more data-driven higher education marketing campaign? Reach out to learn more about our specialized digital marketing services.
Benefits of a Data-Driven Marketing Campaign
What are the benefits of big data analytics in higher education marketing? A data-driven approach to marketing offers several advantages that can elevate your institution’s performance and visibility. First, it enhances decision-making. With access to real-time and historical data, you can base your decisions on evidence rather than assumptions. For example, if you notice that email campaigns targeting a particular geographic region yield a higher application rate, you can allocate more resources to similar efforts.
Second, data analytics in higher education enables personalization. Prospective students now expect tailored experiences that speak to their unique aspirations and challenges. By leveraging data, you can segment your audience and deliver content that resonates deeply with each group. This level of personalization increases engagement and fosters trust and loyalty.
Additionally, data analytics optimizes your budget. In the past, marketing efforts often involved a degree of guesswork, leading to wasted resources. With data, you can pinpoint what works and what doesn’t, ensuring every dollar you spend contributes to your goals. For instance, if a social media ad targeting international students outperforms others, you can reallocate funds to expand that campaign.
Finally, data analytics offers the ability to measure success with precision. By setting key performance indicators (KPIs) and tracking them over time, you clearly understand what’s driving results. Whether the number of inquiries generated by a digital ad or the completion rate of an online application form, data analytics provides you with the tools to evaluate and refine your strategies continuously.
Source: HEM
Example: Our clients have access to our specialized performance-tracking services. The information in the image above, coupled with the school’s specific objectives, allows us to assess what is working and what needs changing. It informs our strategy, provides valuable insights into how new strategies are performing, and offers detailed insights into the changes that can be made for optimal results.
Types of Data Analytics Tools for Higher Education Marketers
The many data analytics tools available can seem overwhelming, but selecting the right ones can significantly improve your marketing efforts. These tools generally fall into a few key categories.
Web analytics platforms, such as Google Analytics, allow you to track user behaviour on your website. From page views to time spent on specific pages, these tools help you understand how prospective students interact with your digital presence. For instance, if many visitors drop off on your application page, it may indicate a need to simplify the process.
Customer relationship management (CRM) systems, like our system, Mautic, help you manage and analyze interactions with prospective and current students. CRMs help you organize your outreach efforts, track the progress of leads through the enrollment funnel, and identify trends in student engagement.
As a higher education institution, a system like our Student Portal will guide your prospects down the enrollment funnel. The Student Portal keeps track of vital student information such as their names, contact information, and relationship with your school. You need these data points to retarget students effectively through ads and email campaigns.
Source: HEM | Student Portal
Example: Here, you see how our SIS (Student Information System) tracks the progress of school applications, complete with insights like each prospect’s program of interest and location. This data is vital for creating and timing marketing materials, such as email campaigns based on each contact’s current needs, guiding them to the next phase of the enrollment funnel.
Social media analytics tools, including platforms like Hootsuite or Sprout Social, provide insights into your social media performance. These tools can reveal which types of content resonate most with your audience, enabling you to fine-tune your messaging.
Source: Sprout Social
Example: Social media is a powerful tool for a higher education institution, particularly when targeting Gen-Z prospects. Like any marketing tactic, optimizing social media platforms requires measuring post-performance. A tool like Sprout Social, pictured above, tracks paid and organic performance, streamlining reports and even offering insights into competitor data.
Predictive analytics platforms, such as Tableau or SAS, take your efforts further by using historical data to forecast future outcomes. These tools can help you identify at-risk students who may not complete the enrollment process or predict which programs are likely to see increased interest based on current trends.
Use These Actionable Tips for Optimizing ROI Using Data Analytics
Clearly define your goals to maximize the impact of data analytics in education marketing campaigns. Whether you aim to increase enrollment in a specific program, boost alumni engagement, or expand your reach internationally, having a clear objective will guide your efforts and help you measure success effectively.
Next, ensure that you’re collecting the right data. Too often, institutions fall into the trap of gathering vast amounts of data without a clear plan for its use. Focus on metrics that align with your goals, such as lead generation, conversion rates, and engagement levels. Regularly audit your data collection processes to ensure they remain relevant and efficient.
Once you’ve gathered your data, prioritize analysis. This step involves identifying patterns and trends that can inform your strategy. For instance, if your data shows that most applications come from mobile devices, optimizing your website for mobile users becomes a top priority. Similarly, if you notice that email open rates are highest on Tuesdays, you can adjust your sending schedule accordingly.
Another key aspect of optimizing ROI is experimentation. Use your data to test different strategies, such as varying your ad copy, targeting different demographics, or experimenting with new platforms. Over time, you’ll better understand what resonates with your audience.
Don’t overlook the importance of collaboration. Data analytics should be integrated across departments. By sharing insights with admissions, student services, and academic departments, you can create a more cohesive and impactful strategy and carve an efficient path toward the desired results. For example, if your analytics reveal a growing interest in STEM programs, your academic team can develop targeted resources to meet that demand.
Finally, invest in ongoing education and training. Data analytics constantly evolves, and staying up-to-date on the latest tools and techniques is essential. Encourage your team to participate in workshops, webinars, and courses to enhance their skills and bring fresh insights to your campaigns.
How We Help Clients to Leverage Data Analytics Solutions: A Case Study with Western University
The transformative potential of data analytics is best illustrated through real-world examples. Western University of Health Sciences, a leading graduate school for health professionals in California, partnered with us to optimize its data analytics strategy. The collaboration highlights how implementing tailored data solutions can drive meaningful results.
HEM began by conducting program—and service-specific interviews with Western University staff to identify the analytics needs of managers across the institution. These discussions revealed unique departmental needs, prompting the creation of tailored analytics profiles and corresponding website objectives. Subsequently, data was segmented and collected in alignment with these tailored profiles, ensuring actionable insights for each group.
A comprehensive technical audit of Western’s web ecosystem revealed several challenges in implementing analytics tools. HEM recommended and implemented a series of changes through a custom analytics implementation guide. These changes included the university’s web team developing and installing cross- and subdomain tracking codes and creating data filters, such as internal traffic exclusion.
One of the highest priorities was tracking student registration behaviour. HEM developed a custom “apply now” registration funnel that integrated seamlessly with Western’s SunGard Banner registration pages to address this. This funnel provided a clear view of prospect and registrant behaviour across the main website and its subdomains, offering valuable insights into the user journey.
Over three months, HEM implemented these solutions and provided custom monthly reports to program managers. These reports verified the successful integration of changes, including the application of filters and cross-domain tracking. As a result, Western’s managers gained the ability to fully track student registrations, monitor library download behaviour, and make data-informed decisions to enhance student services.
Western University’s Director of Instructional Technology praised HEM’s efforts, noting that the refined tracking capabilities clarified how prospective students navigated the site. The successful collaboration demonstrates the significant impact of data analytics solutions on improving user experience and institutional efficiency.
Source: HEM
HEM continues to build data-driven marketing campaigns for clients, streamlining their workflows, providing deep insights, increasing engagement, and boosting enrollment.
Higher ed data analytics is necessary for building effective marketing campaigns. By understanding its role and potential, you can craft data-driven strategies that elevate your institution’s visibility, improve engagement, and optimize ROI. As you embrace data analytics, remember that its true power lies in its ability to guide informed decision-making and foster continuous improvement. Whether you aim to attract more students, enhance retention, or build stronger alumni relationships, data analytics provides the roadmap to success. Start leveraging its insights today and position your institution as a leader in an increasingly competitive landscape.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is the role of data analysis in education marketing?
Data analytics involves collecting, processing, and interpreting data to uncover patterns, trends, and actionable insights. In higher education marketing, data analytics enables you to better understand your target audience—prospective students, parents, alumni, and other stakeholders—and craft strategies that resonate with them.
What are the benefits of big data analytics in higher education marketing?
A data-driven approach to marketing offers several advantages that can elevate your institution’s performance and visibility, including:
We will explore this vital question with the help of Jeremy C. Young, the Freedom to Learn program director at PEN America (and excellent 2023 Forum guest).
Study abroad is tied to personal and professional growth for college students, but crossing the border can be an enormous hurdle or feel unattainable for some learners.
A new initiative at Bucknell University seeks to empower and support first-generation and low-income students who are interested in experiential learning and study away through workshops, financial aid and mentorship.
In this episode of Voices of Student Success, host Ashley Mowreader speaks to Chris Brown, Bucknell’s Andrew Hartman ’71 and Joseph Fama ’71 Executive Director of the Center for Access and Success, to learn more about the center and how it reduces barriers to student participation in high-impact activities.
President Trump has used diversity, equity and inclusion to explain failures in education, the economy and national security, so you might think we’d be inured to his strategies by now. When he blamed the tragic plane crash in Washington, D.C., on DEI, he reached a new nadir of callousness. The victims of the crash had not even been recovered and he was blaming DEI policies for “lower” standards. When pressed by reporters, he couldn’t even articulate the object of his complaint or any specifics related to last week’s crash. His instinct, though, reveals a deeper, more troubling current.
By tacking immediately to DEI in the wake of a tragedy, he seeks to create an association in the minds of Americans: People of color are underqualified and incompetent. As a woman of color who earned a Ph.D. and is also the president of a university, I know these narratives are baseless. I know how many talented, innovative people of color there are in our country. I know that their leadership, research and intelligence have produced countless benefits to our society. I also know that we have spent the last century undoing the psychological and practical damage of systemic racism in our nation. We have spent precious capital in our country recreating equality of opportunity, and programs of diversity, equity and inclusion have been essential to this transformation.
When a president of the United States has the audacity to pose DEI as a corruption tool he is combating, I cannot be silent. It is an affront to those who sacrificed in the multiple civil rights struggles of the 20th century and helped position our nation as a place with more equality of opportunity than ever in our history. Education has been a central part of that architecture.
As a student of language and culture, I also know that when a president and his narrow-minded minions repeat a paradigm ad nauseam, people start to believe it. The forerunner of exclusion and violence across history has been gradual dehumanization. Let us not be complicit with our silence.
DeRionne P. Pollard is president of Nevada State University. The views expressed here are her own and do not represent the views of Nevada State University or the Nevada System of Higher Education.
