This blog was kindly authored by Naomi Lumutenga, Executive Director and co-founder of Higher Education Resource Services (East Africa).
Despite commendable interventions in recent decades, a gendered leadership gap persists at varying levels within higher education institutions. In 2024, women led 27% of the top 200 universities in the US; 36% in the top UK universities; 55% in the Netherlands’ top 11; and 29% in Germany’s top 21. In contrast, female leadership was far less common in Sub-Saharan Africa: only two of Ethiopia’s 46 universities, two of Tanzania’s 60, and six of South Africa’s 26 public universities were headed by women. While some may argue that comparisons with Western institutions are unfair due to their longstanding systems, the disparity highlights persistent structural barriers to gender parity in university leadership. Shifting focus from individual to organisational transformation can deliver change. As an example, long-standing financial systems have been leapfrogged. Currently, it is quicker to wire money to and within many African countries, compared to Europe or the USA. Linear comparisons along time periods, to effect change, do not, therefore, tell the full story; the real focus should be on the political will from within universities to acknowledge the value in and shift leadership towards gender parity.
Our organisation, (Higher Education Resource Services East Africa) addresses gender equality in universities, as these institutions shape future leaders. Prestigious institutions like the University of Oxford have produced multiple prime ministers and policymakers across the globe, as the recent HEPI / Kaplan Soft Power Index demonstrates. In East Africa, notable alumni of Uganda’s Makerere University include past and serving national leaders like veteran Mwalimu Julius Nyerere and Benjamin Mkapa (Tanzania); Mwai Kibaki (Kenya); Paul Kagame (Rwanda); Milton Obote (Uganda); and Joseph Kabila (Democratic Republic of Congo). However, Makerere University (unlike the University of Oxford) has never had a female Vice Chancellor.
The structure and landscape of such institutions matter because they model frameworks and practices for the communities they serve. The persistent unequal representation triggered the work of HERS-EA that culminated, in part, in our recent publication.
Findings from our unpublished study conducted in 2024 across 35 universities in East Africa illustrated the situation starkly. This study was conducted by Makerere University in collaboration with HERS-East Africa, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The aim was to analyse the underlying barriers that prevent women from progressing into leadership and, for those who advance, from thriving. While some of the findings might be culturally unique to East African contexts, the majority were acknowledged, at the annual Engagement Scholarship Consortium conference in Portland, USA (October 2024), as being relevant to any higher education institution. In Japan, for example, there is evidence of cultural pressure exerted differently when women seek promotion; as Kathy Matsui asserts, women decline promotional offers for fear of how they might be treated when/if they get pregnant.
Our study of premier universities in East Africa found that, despite gender equality policies, female leadership remains rare: only two of seven top universities had a female Chancellor (a ceremonial role), none had a female Vice Chancellor, and just one had a female Deputy Vice Chancellor (who was nearing retirement). With respect to enrolment, while most institutions claimed gender parity at admission, few tracked or reported gender disaggregated data at graduation or PhD completion, and evidence of tracking progress was limited.
PhDs, research leadership, and grant management are important for university leadership, so we highlighted these areas and addressed implicit institutional norms. Drawing on these lived experiences, we concluded that gender discrimination in university leadership persists through biased job criteria, age limits, and interview questions. Other barriers include a lack of accountability, inadequate strategies against sexual harassment, and poor support for women to complete PhDs.
Co-created recommendations included trialling an adapted equivalent of the non-punitive Athena Swan Charter, which develops a culture of self-assessment while mitigating potential backlash. The Athena Swan Charter was initiated in the UK in 2005, and it is gaining global traction. It provides a sliding scale of progression towards gender equality, from bronze to silver and gold. Other proposed interventions included providing writing bootcamps with childcare and research advisors present, away from family and other distractions. Aspects of the quota system and structural frameworks in Scandinavian countries were discussed, but while lessons can be learnt from these transformational shifts, the real stumbling block is the lack of political will for changing norms rather than individual women within East African institutions. However, change is possible. Rwanda’s post-1994 Genocide national policies include quotas, and they are revised every three years to assess progress towards gender equality in all sectors. Currently, women hold 61.3% of the total seats in parliament, and they occupy 66% of the total seats in cabinets. Overall, Rwanda is now considered one of the best achievers in the world for gender equality. Perhaps lessons can be learnt from Rwanda’s progress that can give us all reason to hope.
by Olivia Sanchez, The Hechinger Report November 5, 2025
LA JOLLA, Calif. — On a Thursday this fall, hundreds of students at the University of California, San Diego, were heading to classes that, at least on paper, seemed to have very little to do with their majors.
Hannah Jenny, an economics and math major, was on their way to a class on sustainable development. Angelica Pulido, a history major who aspires to work in the museum world, was getting ready for a course on gender and climate justice. Later that evening, others would show up for a lecture on economics of the environment, where they would learn how to calculate the answer to questions such as: “How many cents extra per gallon of gas are people willing to pay to protect seals from oil spills?”
Although most of these students don’t aspire to careers in climate science or advocacy, the university is betting that it’s just as important for them to understand the science and societal implications of climate change as it is for them to understand literature and history, even if they’re not planning to become writers or historians. UCSD is perhaps the first major public university in the country to require all undergraduate students to take a class on climate change to earn their degree.
The requirement, which rolled out with first-year students last fall, came about because UCSD leaders believe students won’t be prepared for the workforce if they don’t understand climate change. Around the globe, global warming is already causing severe droughts, water scarcity, fires, rising sea levels, flooding, storms and declining biodiversity; leaders at UCSD argue every job will be affected.
And even as President Donald Trump dismisses climate change as a hoax and cancels funding for research on it, other colleges are also exploring how to ensure students are knowledgeable about the subject. Arizona State University began requiring that students take a class in sustainability last year, while San Francisco State University added a climate justice class requirement to begin this fall.
“You can’t avoid climate change,” said Amy Lerner, a professor in the urban planning department at UCSD. “You can’t escape it in the private sector. You can’t escape it in the public sector. It’s just everywhere.” Students, she said, must be made ready to engage with all of its likely consequences.
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UCSD, a public university that serves roughly 35,000 undergraduate students, is not demanding that everyone sign up for Climate Change 101. Instead, students can fulfill the requirement by taking any of more than 50 classes in at least 23 disciplines across the university, including sustainable development, the course Jenny is taking.
There’s also psychology of the climate crisis, religion and ecology, energy economics, and several classes in the environmental science and oceanography departments, among others. And leaders at the university are working to develop more classes that satisfy the requirement, including one on the life cycle of a computer.
Bryan Alexander, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and author of a book on higher education and the climate crisis, said that while colleges have long taught about climate change in classes related to ecology, climatology and environmental science, it’s only been in the last decade or so that he’s seen other disciplines tackle the topic.
Climate change, Alexander said, “is the new liberal arts” — and colleges should take it seriously.
K. Wayne Yang, a UCSD provost who served on the original group that advocated for the requirement, said every industry and career field will experience the effects of climate change in some way. Health care providers need to know how to treat people who have been exposed to extreme heat or wildfire smoke; psychologists need to understand climate anxiety; and café owners need to know how the price of coffee changes in response to droughts or other natural disasters in coffee-growing regions.
Jenny, the senior taking a class on sustainable development, is eager to get answers to a question that has, in their three years as an economics and mathematics major, become difficult not to ponder: How can economic growth be the silver bullet of societal change if it has so many negative consequences for the planet?
“It’s definitely my hope that this is a class that will teach me something new about how to consider humanity’s path forward without destroying this earth, without destroying each other, without sacrificing quality of life for any person on this planet,” Jenny said.
Jenny isn’t subject to the requirement because they entered college before it rolled out. But they said they like the idea of encouraging students to step outside their comfort zones and fields of study and, in many cases, consider their future career paths in the context of the changing climate.
Other students, like junior Pulido, don’t see a specific link between climate change and their future careers. Pulido, who has spent the last few years working in the visitors center at San Diego’s Balboa Park and aspires to work in museums, said she signed up for the gender and climate justice class simply because it sounded interesting to her. She believes climate change is important, and she’s hoping that taking this class will help give her a better idea of how its role in history and might play into her career.
Colleges are taking different approaches to teaching their students about climate change, with some requiring a course in sustainability, a broad discipline that goes beyond the specific scientific phenomenon of climate change.
At Arizona State, sustainability classes can cover anything about how human, social, economic, political and cultural choices affect human and environmental well-being generally, said Anne Jones, the university’s vice provost for undergraduate education.
Dickinson and Goucher colleges have had such requirements since 2015 and 2007, respectively.
At San Francisco State University, leaders said they instead chose to require climate justice for all students, beginning with the class of 2029, because of the urgency of understanding how climate change affects communities differently.
Students need to understand broader systems of oppression and privilege so that they can address the unequal effects of climate change for “communities of color, low-income communities, global south communities and other marginalized communities,” said Autumn Thoyre, co-director of Climate HQ, the university’s center for climate education, research and action.
Yang and other UCSD leaders believe that, despite the increased politicization of climate change under Trump, they’ve received little pushback on the new requirement because of the university’s reputation as a climate-concerned institution. (It descended from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, initially founded in 1903.) But this model may not work as well on other campuses.
In communities where people’s livelihoods depend on activities that contribute to climate change, like coal mining or oil production, educators may have to modify their approach so as to not come off as offensive or threatening, said Jo Tavares, director of the California Center for Climate Change Education at West Los Angeles College.
“Messaging is so important, and education cannot be done in a way that just forces facts upon people,” Tavares said.
At UCSD, to meet the graduation requirement, a course must be at least 30 percent about climate change: For example, a class that meets twice a week for a 10-week term must have at least six of its 20 sessions be about climate change. And the course syllabus must address at least two of the following four categories: the scientific aspects; human and social dimensions; project-based learning; or solutions.
The first time Lerner, the urban studies professor, applied for her sustainable development course to count toward the requirement, in July 2024, the committee told her she needed to better explain how the class addressed climate change. It wasn’t enough to simply have “sustainable” in the course name, committee members told her; she had to better articulate the role of climate change in sustainable development, a course she’s been teaching some version of for nearly 20 years.
Her students helped her go through the syllabus and identify all the points where she was teaching about how development contributes to climate change, even if she wasn’t explicitly putting those words to paper. After Lerner revised the descriptions of the class topics and made a few additions, the class was approved, she said.
On that fall Thursday, Lerner walked around her large glass-walled classroom while discussing development and globalization with the 65 undergraduate students in her sustainable development class. They covered how to balance equity, economy and environment in development, as well as various ways to measure the well-being of societies, including gross national income, food security, birthrate and infant mortality, happiness, fertility, education and lifespan. Lerner peppered her lecture with jokes and relatable examples, asking, for example, how many siblings students had before explaining the role of fertility and birth rate in a healthy society. (One student had 12, but the average was closer to two.)
Lerner, who now chairs the committee that decides which classes meet the requirement, said most of her students come in with the understanding that climate change is caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere, and some have even used an online tool to calculate their own carbon footprints. Often, their education has been focused on the hard science aspect of climate change, but they haven’t learned about what society has experienced as a result of climate change, she said.
When she asks them what can be done about climate change, she said, “they’re deer in the headlights.”
Across campus, economics professor Mark Jacobsen teaches a lecture class every Thursday night on the economics of the environment. It meets the climate change requirement, but it also covers a core economics idea, he said: achieving efficiency.
Jacobsen is teaching students the formulas and methods they’ll need to answer questions like whether it’s worth it to spend $1 billion now to build renewable energy sources to avoid $10 billion in natural disaster cleanup in 30 years.
Though Jenny hasn’t taken Jacobsen’s class, this is exactly the type of dilemma they’re worried about.
Jenny, a public transit enthusiast so dedicated that they got a commercial driver’s license just to drive for Triton Transit, the campus bus system, said the requirement encourages students to face the climate crisis rather than shy away from it.
“It can be easy to kind of put your head down and be like, ‘That is too big for me to think about, and too scary,’” Jenny said. But it’s imperative, they added, that students be “forced to reckon with it and think about it and talk about it, to have that knowledge kind of swirling around in your head.”
Contact staff writer Olivia Sanchez at 212-678-8402 or [email protected].
This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/climate-change-is-the-new-liberal-arts-colleges-build-environmental-lessons-into-degrees/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
When our leadership team at Firthmoor Primary met with an OPAL (Outdoor Play and Learning) representative, one message came through clearly: “Play isn’t a break from learning, it is learning.”
As she flipped through slides, we saw examples from other schools where playgrounds were transformed into hubs of creativity. There were “play stations” where children could build, imagine, and collaborate. One that stood out for me was the simple addition of a music station, where children could dance to songs during break time, turning recess into an outlet for joy, self-expression, and community.
The OPAL program is not about giving children “more time off.” It’s about making play purposeful, inclusive, and developmental. At Firthmoor, our head teacher has made OPAL part of the long-term school plan, ensuring that playtime builds creativity, resilience, and social skills just as much as lessons in the classroom.
After seeing these OPAL examples, I couldn’t help but think about how different this vision is from what dominates the conversation in so many schools: technology. While OPAL emphasizes unstructured play, movement, and creativity, most education systems, both in the UK and abroad, are under pressure to adopt more edtech. The argument is that early access to screens helps children personalize their learning, build digital fluency, and prepare for a future where tech skills are essential.
But what happens when those two philosophies collide?
On one side, programs like OPAL remind us that children need hands-on experiences, imagination, and social connection–skills that can’t be replaced by a tablet. On the other, schools around the world are racing to keep pace with the digital age.
Even in Silicon Valley, where tech innovation is born, schools like the Waldorf School of the Peninsula have chosen to go screen-free in early years. Their reasoning echoes OPAL’s ethos: Creativity and deep human interaction lay stronger cognitive and emotional foundations than any app can provide.
Research supports this caution. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health advises parents and schools to carefully balance screen use with physical activity, sleep, and family interaction. And in 2023, UNESCO warned that “not all edtech improves learning outcomes, and some displace play and social interaction.” Similarly, the OECD’s 2021 report found that heavy screen use among 10-year-olds correlated with lower well-being scores, highlighting the risks of relying too heavily on devices in the early years.
As a governor, I see both sides: the enthusiasm for digital tools that promise engagement and efficiency, and the concern for children’s well-being and readiness for lifelong learning. OPAL has made me think about what kind of foundations we want to lay before layering on technology.
So where does this leave us? For me, the OPAL initiative at Firthmoor is a powerful reminder that education doesn’t have to be an either/or choice between tech and tradition. The real challenge is balance.
This raises important questions for all of us in education:
When is the right time to introduce technology?
How do we balance digital fluency with the need for deep, human-centered learning?
Where do we draw the line between screens and play, and who gets to decide?
This is a conversation not just for educators, but for parents, policymakers, and communities. How do we want the next generation to learn, play, and thrive?
Nesren El-Baz, ESL Educator
Nesren El-Baz is an ESL educator with over 20 years of experience, and is a certified bilingual teacher with a Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction. El-Baz is currently based in the UK, holds a Masters degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Houston Christian University, and specializes in developing in innovative strategies for English Learners and Bilingual education.
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Social emotional learning — lessons in soft skills like listening to people you disagree with or calming yourself down before a test — has become a flashpoint in the culture wars.
The conservative political group Moms for Liberty opposes SEL, as it is often abbreviated, telling parents that its “goal is to psychologically manipulate students to accept the progressive ideology that supports gender fluidity, sexual preference exploration, and systemic oppression.” Critics say that parents should discuss social and emotional matters at home and that schools should stick to academics. Meanwhile, some advocates on the left say standard SEL classes don’t go far enough and should include such topics as social justice and anti-racism training.
While the political battle rages on, academic researchers are marshalling evidence for what high-quality SEL programs actually deliver for students. The latest study, by researchers at Yale University, summarizes 12 years of evidence, from 2008 to 2020, and it finds that 30 different SEL programs, which put themselves through 40 rigorous evaluations involving almost 34,000 students, tended to produce “moderate” academic benefits.
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The meta-analysis, published online Oct. 8 in the peer-reviewed journal Review of Educational Research, calculated that the grades and test scores of students in SEL classes improved by about 4 percentile points, on average, compared with students who didn’t receive soft-skill instruction. That’s the equivalent of moving from the 50th percentile (in the middle) to the 54th percentile (slightly above average). Reading gains were larger (more than 6 percentile points) than math gains (fewer than 4 percentile points). Longer-duration SEL programs, extending more than four months, produced double the academic gains — more than 8 percentile points.
“Social emotional learning interventions are not designed, most of the time, to explicitly improve academic achievement,” said Christina Cipriano, one of the study’s four authors and an associate professor at Yale Medical School’s Child Study Center. “And yet we demonstrated, through our meta-analytic report, that explicit social emotional learning improved academic achievement and it improved both GPA and test scores.”
Cipriano also directs the Education Collaboratory at Yale, whose mission is to “advance the science of learning and social and emotional development.”
The academic boost from SEL in this 2025 paper is much smaller than the 11 percentile points documented in an earlier 2011 meta-analysis that summarized research through 2007, when SEL had not yet gained widespread popularity in schools. That has since changed. More than 80 percent of principals of K-12 schools said their schools used an SEL curriculum during the 2023-24 school year, according to a survey by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) and the RAND Corporation.
The Yale researchers only studied a small subset of the SEL market, programs that subjected themselves to a rigorous evaluation and included academic outcomes. Three-quarters of the 40 studies were randomized-controlled trials, similar to pharmaceutical trials, where schools or teachers were randomly assigned to teach an SEL curriculum. The remaining studies, in which schools or teachers volunteered to participate, still had control groups of students so that researchers could compare the academic gains of students who did not receive SEL instruction.
The SEL programs in the Yale study taught a wide range of soft skills, from mindfulness and anger management to resolving conflicts and setting goals. It is unclear which soft skills are driving the academic gains. That’s an area for future research.
“Developmentally, when we think about what we know about how kids learn, emotional regulation is really the driver,” said Cipriano. “No matter how good that curriculum or that math program or reading curriculum is, if a child is feeling unsafe or anxious or stressed out or frustrated or embarrassed, they’re not available to receive the instruction, however great that teacher might be.”
Cipriano said that effective programs give students tools to cope with stressful situations. She offered the example of a pop quiz, from the perspective of a student. “You can recognize, I’m feeling nervous, my blood is rushing to my hands or my face, and I can use my strategies of counting to 10, thinking about what I know, and use positive self talk to be able to regulate, to be able to take my test,” she said.
The strongest evidence for SEL is in elementary school, where the majority of evaluations have been conducted (two-thirds of the 40 studies). For young students, SEL lessons tend to be short but frequent, for example, 10 minutes a day. There’s less evidence for middle and high school SEL programs because they haven’t been studied as much. Typically, preteens and teens have less frequent but longer sessions, a half hour or even 90 minutes, weekly or monthly.
Cipriano said that schools don’t need to spend “hours and hours” on social and emotional instruction in order to see academic benefits. A current trend is to incorporate or embed social and emotional learning within academic instruction, as part of math class, for example. But none of the underlying studies in this paper evaluated whether this was a more effective way to deliver SEL. All of the programs in this study were separate stand-alone SEL lessons.
Advice to schools
Schools are inundated by sales pitches from SEL vendors. Estimates of the market size range wildly, but a half dozen market research firms put it above $2 billion annually. Not all SEL programs are necessarily effective or can be expected to produce the academic gains that the Yale team calculated.
Cipriano advises schools not to be taken in by slick marketing. Many of the effective programs have no marketing at all and some are free. Unfortunately, some of these programs have been discontinued or have transformed through ownership changes. But she says school leaders can ask questions about which specific skills the SEL program claims to foster, whether those skills will help the district achieve its goals, such as improving school climate, and whether the program has been externally evaluated.
“Districts invest in things all the time that are flashy and pretty, across content areas, not just SEL,” said Cipriano. “It may never have had an external evaluation, but has a really great social media presence and really great marketing.”
Cipriano has also built a new website, improvingstudentoutcomes.org, to track the latest research on SEL effectiveness and to help schools identify proven programs.
Cipriano says parents should be asking questions too. “Parents should be partners in learning,” said Cipriano. “I have four kids, and I want to know what they’re learning about in school.”
This meta-analysis probably won’t stop the SEL critics who say that these programs force educators to be therapists. Groups like Moms for Liberty, which holds its national summit this week, say teachers should stick to academics. This paper rejects that dichotomy because it suggests that emotions, social interaction and academics are all interlinked.
Before criticizing all SEL programs, educators and parents need to consider the evidence.
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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.
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The U.S. military faced a new threat to national security toward the end of the 20th century. This threat affected the recruitment and retention of our nation’s armed forces, reducing their capacity to defend the denizens of the United States and our interests overseas.
The threat wasn’t the Cold War; it wasn’t tension in the Middle East; and it wasn’t international or domestic terrorism.
The threat was a lack of affordable, accessible, high-quality child care.
The makeup of the armed forces changed following the shift from a national draft to an all-volunteer military after the war in Vietnam. More service members had families in the late 1970s and 1980s — many of them with young children. And many more of those families included two working parents than in previous decades.
The child care crisis faced by the military 40 to 50 years ago was similar to the one civilians face today. More families with working parents increased the demand for child care. Thousands of children languished on waitlists, forcing families to consider forms of supervision that lacked consistent standards for safety, teacher training, student/teacher ratios, and curricula. Teachers were poorly compensated, and turnover was high.
Back then, as now, parents couldn’t afford the fees necessary to cover the costs of addressing these challenges, and limited public investment wasn’t enough to fill the gap.
Graphic by Lanie Sorrow
Because the child care crisis was seen as a threat to the collective future of Americans, elected officials took action. Congress passed the Military Child Care Act of 1989, which put a priority on affordability, accessibility, and quality in child care for service members.
With the end of child care stabilization efforts that were undertaken during the pandemic, North Carolinians now face a similar threat to our own collective future. The military’s approach offers lessons for where we can go from here, in our communities and across our state.
An experiment in universal child care
The Military Child Care Act wasn’t the first time the military had taken the lead on child care. During World War II, women entered the workforce in massive numbers, filling the roles of men who were drafted to serve in the military. This raised the question of who would care for children when both parents were working outside the home to defend American interests.
Congress responded with the Lanham Act of 1940, creating a nationwide, universal child care system to support working families with children through age 12. Federal grants were issued to communities that demonstrated their need for child care related to parents working in the defense industry.
The program distributed $1.4 billion (in 2025 dollars) between 1943 and 1946 to more than 600 communities in 47 states. The grants could be used to build and maintain child care facilities, train and compensate teachers, and provide meals to students.
In his 2017 analysis of the Lanham Act’s outcomes for mothers and children, Chris M. Herbst, of Arizona State University’s School of Public Affairs, found that “the Lanham Act increased maternal employment several years after the program was dismantled.”
An image of Rosie the Riveter from a 1943 issue of the magazine Hygeia (published by the American Medical Association) demonstrating the need for child care.
Herbst also found that “children exposed to the program were more likely to be employed, to have higher earnings, and to be less likely to receive cash assistance as adults.”
One lesson Herbst took from his research was that the Lanham Act was successful because of the broad support it received from parents, advocates for education and women, and employers. He noted: “Each group was committed to its success because something larger was at stake.”
Today’s military-operated child care model
While the Lanham Act was a short-lived national experiment that hasn’t received much study, the military’s child care program since adoption of the Military Child Care Act of 1989 has become a widely acclaimed model for publicly subsidized early care and learning, serving about 200,000 children each year.
Four categories of child care are available through military-operated child care programs: Child Development Centers (CDCs), Family Child Care (FCC), 24/7 Centers, and School Aged Care (SAC). The official military child care website describes each program type:
Child Development Centers (CDCs) — CDCs provide child care services for infants, pretoddlers, toddlers, and preschoolers. They operate Monday through Friday during standard work hours, and depending on the location offer full-day, part-day, and hourly care.
Family Child Care (FCC) — Family child care is provided by qualified child care professionals in their homes. Designed for infants through school agers, each FCC provider determines what care they offer, which may include full-day, part-day, school year, summer camp, 24/7, and extended care.
24/7 Centers — 24/7 Centers provide child care for infants through school age children in a home-like setting during both traditional and non-traditional hours on a regular basis. The program is designed to support watch standers or shift workers who work rotating or non-traditional schedules (i.e., evenings, overnights, and weekends).
School Aged Care (SAC) — School age care is facility-based care for children from the start of kindergarten through the end of the summer after seventh grade. This program type operates Monday through Friday during standard work hours. SAC programs provide both School Year Care and Summer Camp.
Requirements for military-operated child care programs are typically more stringent than state requirements. For one thing, they must be accredited by one of the following: National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), National Early Childhood Program Accreditation (NECPA), the Council on Accreditation (COA), or the National Accreditation Commission (NAC).
For context, the requirements for licensed child care in North Carolina are relatively stringent compared with other states, but still fall below the requirements for NAEYC accreditation, which is widely recognized as the national standard. Only 110 programs in our state are NAEYC-accredited — many of which are Head Start or military-operated programs — out of about 5,300 total state-licensed programs.
Military-operated child care programs offer families hourly, part-day, full-day, extended, or overnight care, plus afterschool and summer programs.
The maximum rate is on par with the national average for civilian child care in 2023, meaning that almost every family using military-operated child care programs is paying less than the national average for typically higher-quality early care and learning.
The Department of Defense budgeted about $1.8 billion for child care in 2024 — about 0.2% of its $841.4 billion total budget.
Military child care in North Carolina
In addition to military-operated child care programs, service members may be eligible for Military Child Care in Your Neighborhood (MCCYN), a fee assistance program for families who can’t access military-operated child care. MCCYN pays a portion of the cost of enrolling children in early care and learning programs that meet the military’s high-quality standards in their community.
North Carolina is one of 19 locations where military families may be eligible for MCCYN-PLUS, which expands the MCCYN program to child care programs that participate in state or local Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) in places where nationally accredited care is not available.
Both programs rely on the availability of high-quality child care in civilian communities. That’s a challenge in North Carolina, which was already facing a child care shortage before the pandemic. Our state has lost almost 6% of licensed child care programs since February 2020, with more expected to close because stabilization grants have ended.
According to the NC Military Affairs Commission, there are 12 military bases and more than 130,000 active-duty military members in North Carolina, giving us the fourth-largest active-duty military population in the nation.
In January 2025, Fayetteville Technical Community College hosted the state’s first N.C. Military Community Childcare Summit, organized by the North Carolina Department of Military and Veteran Affairs (NCDMVA) to discuss the problem that military communities are having with access to community-based child care.
The first N.C. Military Community Childcare Summit in January 2025.( Katie Dukes/EdNC)
The summit culminated in a screening of Take Care, a documentary about North Carolina’s child care crisis produced by the state Department of Health and Human Services and featuring EdNC’s early childhood reporter, Liz Bell.
The issues of spouse resilience and child care are inextricably linked for Angie Mullennix, who works for The Honor Foundation at Fort Bragg, helping members of the U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) transition to careers in the private sector after their military service.
Mullennix served in the U.S. Army for four years after high school and has previously worked for the Department of Public Instruction as the state military liaison. Her husband recently retired from the SOF himself. They have two teenage children.
“If you look at the number of military spouses in North Carolina who have degrees and credentials and could be in the workforce, from nurses to lawyers, lots of them are staying at home,” Mullennix said.
“A big reason why about 40% of (military) spouses do not work is because of child care not being available to them,” Mullennix said, noting that lack of child care is also a barrier to workforce participation among the civilian population.
When Mullennix’s children were under the age of 5, she used hourly child care on base, which was available at no cost when her husband was away on assignment.
“You ask any parent in the world, I don’t care who they are, there’s nothing more important than their child’s safety — then their education,” Mullennix said. “And yet, the two things we think are the most important, we put (their providers) at the lowest pay and ask them to do quality care.”
That’s what sets military child care apart from civilian early care and learning for Mullennix: high quality standards and higher pay for early childhood educators, including benefits. She sees lessons in this for North Carolina.
“You gotta pay them to keep them, there’s no secret behind that,” Mullennix said. “If you pay them high, you can also set the standards really high.”
And because workforce participation — and military readiness — is directly tied to the accessibility and affordability of high-quality child care, not investing in it threatens our collective future.
“North Carolina, or any state that doesn’t offer child care, is shooting itself in the foot,” Mullennix said.
Lessons from military child care
Policymakers at every level who are seeking to end the child care crisis can learn much from the military child care model. One report on the topic offers these lessons:
Do not be daunted by the task. It is possible to take a woefully inadequate child care system and dramatically improve it.
Recognize and acknowledge the seriousness of the child care problem and the consequences of inaction.
Improve quality by establishing and enforcing comprehensive standards, assisting providers in becoming accredited, and enhancing provider compensation and training.
Keep parent fees affordable through subsidies.
Expand the availability of all kinds of care by continually assessing unmet need and taking concrete action steps to address it.
Commit the resources necessary to get the job done.
Both agreed these are the right takeaways for policymakers across North Carolina to consider.
Lesson 1: Do not be daunted by the task
Gale Perry said the top lesson for her is: “Start where you are, know that change is possible, and have a goal post in mind.”
She pointed out that the military’s goal wasn’t a fully publicly funded child care system. It was a system that acknowledged Americans’ values around the role of parents in raising young children — and paying for their care and education. But also that their employers and the government “have a role in offsetting that cost, so that we can ensure that child care is quality, and it is stable, and that the families can actually afford it.”
Smith said there was no “silver bullet” when she and her colleagues were tasked with solving the military’s child care crisis in the 1990s — and there isn’t one for the civilian child care crisis today.
We had to redo the standards, we had to look at the workforce, we had to look at the health and safety issues, we had to look at the fees and how we could bring those fees down. We had to look at the infrastructure of all of it. We’ve got to start thinking about the interconnectedness of all of these things if we’re going to be successful in this country.
Smith said people think that because she worked for the secretary of defense, “I could just tell all the bases what to do, and that would magically happen, which is so not true. It wasn’t just like we could give an order and everybody jumped.”
She said you just have to start where you are, and move up.
Lesson 2: Acknowledge the seriousness of the problem and the consequences of inaction
“The military understood very early the link between people getting to work and child care,” Smith said.
As the military shifted away from relying on conscription and became a more welcoming workplace for women, the need for child care became evident. Smith described working on a base where children were routinely left in cars when their parents were unexpectedly called into work.
“So (military leaders) really got the connection to their guys going to work very quickly, and I think that we still haven’t all understood that in this country,” Smith said, though she notes businesses have started making that connection since the pandemic.
“The other thing the military understood was that a pilot is every bit as important as the mechanic who works on the plane, and so they invest in all of their people,” Smith said.
She and her team had to design a program that worked for everyone, or it wouldn’t work for anyone.
Lesson 3: Improve quality
Smith said quality was of critical importance when she was designing the military’s child care system in the 1990s, especially after child abuse and neglect scandals that came to light in the 1980s.
She and her team studied the child care standards of all 50 states and created a set of military standards that fell squarely in the middle. Then they set about training the 22,000 early childhood educators they already had — most of whom were military spouses — to meet those standards.
That was a six-month training program. Then there was an 18-month training to get them to move beyond those standards toward national accreditation. They hired highly qualified trainers to work with educators at each site.
“And if you didn’t do it, guess what? You’re fired!” Smith said.
There was an incentive to participate in the training, beyond keeping their jobs — higher compensation.
“Maybe some were grumpy about it, but we didn’t have to fire people,” Smith said.
North Carolina already has some tools in place to help educators advance their education and improve their compensation, specifically through the WAGE$ and TEACH programs — both of which were highlighted in the report that identified these lessons.
“(The military) realized they had to get serious about quality and quality standards. And I would say that’s a lesson for us now, particularly in a climate that is deregulatory,” Gale Perry said. “And while I’m for sensible regulatory reform, I think we have to be really thoughtful about not wanting stacks of child deaths in child care sitting on a desk waiting to be investigated.”
Lesson 4: Keep parent fees affordable through subsidies
Smith said that while designing the military’s child care program, she and her team figured out that there was no way parents could afford the actual cost of high-quality child care. So they set up a subsidized system that would provide a 50% match — on average — to parents’ fees, paid directly to child care programs.
“We had to, on average, match parent fees dollar-for-dollar, with the higher-income people paying more and the lower-income paying less,” Smith said. “So a major, for example, would pay two-thirds of the cost, and a private would pay one-third, but the average was 50/50.”
Smith pointed out that we’re already subsidizing child care in ways that are hidden — through the public benefits and social programs that early childhood educators often rely on because of low compensation, and through lack of workforce participation.
Lesson 5: Expand the availability of all kinds of care
Gale Perry said the military’s model really stands out to her for its ability to assess unmet needs and take action to improve.
“In the early 2000s when there were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there were a lot of deployments of National Guard and Reserve who did not live on post and did not have access to on-post child care,” Gale Perry said. “That is really when the military got in the business of thinking about, how do we help build capacity and make child care accessible for military families off post?”
That’s when the MCCYN came about, subsidizing high-quality early care and learning in a broader array of settings in the communities where service members live.
Smith said that the Military Child Care Act was originally targeted toward child care centers, but she recalls briefing the assistant secretary of defense on the potential effects of that strategy when they were designing the system:
I remember saying we need to apply all of this to family child care, to school-aged care, to part-day preschools, because if we don’t, all the parents are going to have a demand on these centers that we can’t meet, right? Because if you lower the cost in the centers and you improve the quality, why would somebody go to another place when they get it cheaper and better over here?
She made the case for educators in every setting getting the same access to training and the same level of compensation, because that’s what would work best for everyone.
“Everything applies to everybody,” Smith said. “And I think that was one of the smartest policy decisions we made.”
Lesson 6: Commit the resources necessary to get the job done
“There was this perception that we just had a lot of money and we threw it at” child care, Smith said. But that wasn’t the case.
“When they passed the Military Child Care Act, it didn’t come with an appropriation,” Gale Perry said. “So they had to fight equally hard for the funding, and a lot of the funding actually ended up coming from local base commanders making the decision to invest in child care.”
Now the military submits a budget request to Congress each year, and depends on those appropriations.
For state and local policymakers seeking to solve the civilian child care crisis without public investment, the woman credited with solving the military’s own child care crisis 35 years ago has a message.
“It’s gonna cost. There’s no way it doesn’t cost,” Smith said.
This blog is by Rod Bristow is CEO of College Online which provides access to lifelong learning, Chair of Council at the University of Bradford, Visiting Professor at the UCL Institute of Education, Chair of the Kortext Academic Advisory Board and former President at Pearson.
I am an advocate for education technology. It is a growing force for good, providing great solutions to real problems:
Reducing teacher workload through lesson planning, curriculum development, homework submission and marking, formative assessments, course management systems and more;
Improving learning outcomes through engaging, immersive experiences, adaptive assessments and the generation of rich data about learning;
Widening access to content and tools through aggregation platforms across thousands of publishers and millions of textbooks; and
Widening access to courses and qualifications for the purpose of lifelong learning using online and blended modes of delivery.
Products and services that solve these problems will continue to take root.
All that said, we have not seen the widespread transformation in education that technology promised to deliver, and investors have had their fingers burned. We could argue this results from unrealistic expectations rather than poor achievement, but there are lessons to be learned.
According to HolonIQ:
2024 saw $2.4 billion of EdTech Venture Capital, representing the lowest level of investment since 2015. The hype of 2021 is well and truly over, with investors seeking fundamentals over ‘fluff’.
The chart says it all. Steady growth in investment over the last decade culminated in a huge peak during Covid. Hype and ‘fluff’ overtook rational thinking, and several superficially attractive businesses spiked and then plummeted in value. In education, details and evidence of impact (or efficacy) matter. Without them, lasting scale is much harder to achieve.
The pendulum has now swung the other way, with investors harder to convince. Investors and entrepreneurs need to ask the question, ‘Does it work?’ before considering how it scales. If they do, they will see plenty of applications that both work and scale, and better-educated investors will be good for the sector.
One of the biggest barriers to scale is the complexity of implementation with teachers, without whom there is little impact. Without getting into the debate about teacher autonomy, most teachers like to do their own thing. And products which bypass teachers, marketed directly to consumers, often struggle to show as much impact and financial return.
Will things be different with AI? The technology, being many times more powerful, will handle much greater flexibility of implementation for teachers than we have seen so far. AI has even greater potential to solve real problems: widening access to learning, saving time for teachers and engaging learners through adaptive digital formative assessment and deeply immersive learning experiences through augmented reality.
But risks of ‘over-selling’ the benefits of AI technologies are potentially heightened by its very power. AI can generate mind-boggling ‘solutions’ for learners which dramatically reduce workload. Some of these are good in making learning more efficient, but questions of efficacy remain. Learning intrinsically requires work: it is done by you, not to you. Technology should not try to make learning easy, but to make hard work stimulating and productive if it is to sustain over the long term.
There is a clear and present danger that AI will undermine learning if high-stakes assessments relying on coursework do not keep pace with the reality of AI. This is a risk yet to be gripped by regulators. There is also little evidence that, for example, AI will ever replace the inspiration of human teachers, and those saying their solutions will do so must make a very strong case. Technology companies can help, but they can also do harm.
New technologies must be grounded in what improves learning, especially when unleashing the power of AI. This is entirely possible.
There are many areas of great promise, but none more so than the enormous expansion in online access to lifelong learning for working people who are otherwise denied the education they need. There are now eight million people (mainly adults) studying for degrees online and tens of millions of people taking shorter online skills courses. Opening access to lifelong learning to everyone remains education’s biggest unmet need and opportunity. Education technologies can be ‘designed in’ to the entire learning experience from the beginning, rather than retrofitted by overworked teachers. Widening access to lifelong learning could deliver a greater transformation to the economy and society than we have seen in 100 years.
Learning tools and platforms are one thing, but what do people need to learn in a world changed by AI? Much has been written about the potential for technology and especially AI to change what people need to learn. A popular narrative is that skills will be more important than knowledge; that knowledge can be so easily searched through the internet or created with AI, there is no need for it to be learned.
Skills do matter, but these statements are wrong. We should not choose between skills and knowledge. Skills are a representation of knowledge. With no knowledge or expertise, there is no skill. More than that, in a world in which AI will have an unimaginable impact on society, we should remember that knowledge provides the very basis of our ability to think and that human memory is the residue of thought.
Only a deeper understanding of learning and the real problems we need to solve will unleash the huge potential for technology to unlock wider access, a better learning experience and higher outcomes. To simultaneously hold the benefits and the risks of AI in a firm embrace, we will need courage, imagination and clarity about the problems to be solved before we get swept up in the hype and fluff. The opportunity is too big to put at risk.
The United States typically sees an uptick in the general public’s interest in civic issues during presidential election years. According to the Pew Research Center, Americans more closely follow the news during such years, and the 2024 election cycle was no exception to what Pew calls the “typical election year surge” (Younis 2020).
On college campuses, this trend can be palpable as well, with students, faculty, and staff feeling more inclined to get involved in civic affairs in some way. Yet it can be difficult to know how to do so, especially on campuses where there is not already a robust civic participation infrastructure.
This article offers a retrospective on our incipient effort in fall 2024 at SUNY Plattsburgh to grow an organization – dubbed simply Plattsburgh Votes – to educate students (in a nonpartisan manner) about voting and to ultimately boost turnout. This is intended to provide guidance for others seeking to galvanize student voting and to create a foundational civic infrastructure on their own campuses for future election cycles. It outlines our approach to conceptualizing student voter engagement, details some key organizational support that is widely accessible to campuses, and reflects on the relative success of different methods of outreach to students.
Understanding the Student Voter Gap
The perception that the latest cohort of young adults is somehow less civically-inclined or interested in politics and current events is, ironically, a trope that recurs with each successive generation. Survey data, however, seem to contradict this notion for members of both the Millennial Generation and Generation Z. According to the American National Election Survey (a reputable source of data widely utilized by political scientists) for instance, young voters (defined as people aged 18-29) in fact show higher levels of interest in elections and public affairs since the turn of the millennium compared to what they reported on surveys conducted between 1976 and 2000 (Holbein and Hillygus 2020, 9).
In this vein, when conceptualizing Plattsburgh Votes, my collaborator Dr. Daniel Lake (Associate Professor of Political Science) and I channeled the framework for understanding young voters’ behavior offered by political scientists John Holbein and Sunshine Hillygus. Hillygus and Holbein note that while young people indeed exhibit a threshold level of interest in elections and civic affairs, there is still a disconnect between these attitudes and their rates of actual voting. Further, many of them intend to vote, but simply do not manage to – a gap that reaches 30% in some ANES data. As the authors summarize the situation, “young people are not turned off by politics…and yet they are not voting in US elections” (Holbein and Hillygus 2020, 8).
To explain the disconnect, they point to what behavioral scientists call “noncognitive skills” as the key impediment to voting among young people. The definition of noncognitive skills varies by context, but they generally refer to “patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior” rather than cognitive aptitudes like reasoning, understanding, and problem solving” (Bjorklund-Young 2016). Noncognitive skills are critical in what Hillygus and Holbein call “follow through” for young people in navigating the practical obstacles and time costs associated with voting, which can be formidable for those unfamiliar with the system (Holbein and Hillygus 2020, 14).
Our voter education efforts at SUNY Plattsburgh were therefore oriented toward ameliorating some of these practical barriers to voting, and in the process, helping reinforce the cultivation of the noncognitive skills that students need in order to be civically engaged.
Helping Students Navigate Location-Based Voting Decisions
One reality that became apparent very quickly is that students largely do not have difficulty registering to vote in some capacity before they arrive at college. Our on-the-ground experience echoed the data for our campus tabulated by the National Study of Voting, Learning, and Engagement (NSLVE) project at Tufts University, which is available for most campuses in the United States (National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement 2025). Our latest NSLVE data indicated a registration rate above 70 percent even during the 2022 midterm election cycle. Whether this is due to efforts by K-12 institutions, the success of “motor voter” laws that enable registration when applying for a driver license or other ID, or some other factor, a large majority of the students we contacted through various outreach efforts indeed reported that they were already registered to vote. This of course has implications for how we address our practical guidance: if the majority of them are successfully registered, what is it that they still need help with?
Our experience with Plattsburgh Votes indicates that possibly the most significant remaining hurdle is young people’s relative lack of awareness that voting is a location-specific activity. Perhaps the most important work conducted by our organization involved the tabling efforts, class visits, and digital outreach geared specifically toward helping students make proactive decisions about where they wanted to vote (using either their home or college address), to check where they were indeed registered, and to request absentee ballots. Yet judging by the volume of students who were still unaware that these options required decisive action before a deadline, it is clear that earlier and more emphatic efforts are necessary to help students actually follow through on their intentions.
Peer-to-Peer Outreach: What Worked—and What Didn’t
Another significant takeaway from the fall 2024 initiative concerns the importance of peer influence in student voter education. As Dr. Allison Rank, a political scientist, veteran organizer, and director of SUNY Oswego’s robust “Vote Oswego” initiative emphasized in guidance to our group, students are more receptive to information delivered face-to-face by a peer than from faculty or another authority figure in any medium. Thanks to our submission of an action plan with the All-In Democracy Challenge – which “outline[s] a campus’ landscape, leadership team, goals, strategies and tactics, and evaluation processes” for encouraging voter participation – we were consequently eligible to apply for and receive a mini-grant from All-In that was used to hire three student interns (ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge 2025). Using collectively generated presentations and educational material, these interns took the lead in delivering our in-person educational outreach efforts during the fall 2024 semester.
Yet we learned quickly that in-person outreach efforts led by student peers still must be strategically responsive to the realities of how students apportion their time and attention. Informational classroom visits by student advocates can be especially effective because students can be coached through a process like (re-)registering or requesting a ballot on the spot, minimizing the need for subsequent steps to be completed on their own. To that end, our group likewise concluded that it behooves organizers to focus classroom visits on one discrete process (e.g. “requesting a ballot to vote by mail”) rather than delivering a presentation that covers all relevant aspects of voting comprehensively.
Other forms of outreach were less successful, however. For instance, the student interns reported dismal attendance at the “voting office hours” that they held in common areas of the college residence buildings. While it is possible that our method of publicizing their availability through emails from the residence life director was suboptimal in garnering student attention, the experience also seemed to indicate significant reluctance on the part of students to plan in advance to seek out help and proactively ask questions. Instead, approaches in which the voter education organization’s representatives initiate the contact seem more promising.
The Untapped Power of Pledges
Finally, one tactic which Plattsburgh Votes did not have the time or resources to pursue extensively in fall 2024 was securing pledges from students to take particular voting actions.
Both research as well as conventional wisdom in grassroots organizing holds that people are generally more likely to follow through on an action when they have pledged to take it. Political science researchers testing whether pledging to vote affected voter turnout in fact found specifically that first-time young voters were likeliest to follow through and vote when they pledged to (Costa, Schaffner, and Prevost 2018). It seems promising, then, for both our organization and any others engaging in student voter education to brainstorm methods of soliciting pledges from students and then following up to remind them of their pledges as deadlines approach.
The campus-specific data on 2024 voter turnout from NSLVE is not yet available. Preliminary reports from the CIRCLE organization at Tufts (which administers the program) estimates that youth turnout in 2024 was down from 2020 to a rate of around 42%, but was stronger in battleground states like Pennsylvania (Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement 2025).We are confident that Plattsburgh Votes was able to have some impact on closing the gap between registration rate and actual voter turnout, but the precise magnitude remains to be seen. Regardless, it is clear that continued effort on campuses is necessary. The efforts must find creative, contextually-sensitive ways to account for the role that “noncognitive skills” play in affecting voting behavior and help students with the procedural aspects of voting so that they can successfully follow through on their intentions.
Dr. Ben Medeiros is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at SUNY Plattsburgh. His teaching and research focus on political communication, media law, and digital media culture. Medeiros is on the editorial board of the journal Communication & Democracy and the author of the book Reputation Management Online: America’s ‘Right To Be Forgotten’ (Routledge/National Communication Association, 2022).
Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. “The Youth Vote in 2024.” CIRCLE. Accessed June 18, 2025. https://circle.tufts.edu/2024-election.
Costa, Mia, Brian F. Schaffner, and Alicia Prevost. “Walking the Walk? Experiments on the Effect of Pledging to Vote on Youth Turnout.” PLoS One 13, no. 5 (May 29, 2018): e0197066. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0197066.
Holbein, John B., and D. Sunshine Hillygus. Making Young Voters: Converting Civic Attitudes into Civic Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement. “About NSLVE.” National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement. Accessed June 18, 2025. https://nslve.tufts.edu/about-us.
The United States typically sees an uptick in the general public’s interest in civic issues during presidential election years. According to the Pew Research Center, Americans more closely follow the news during such years, and the 2024 election cycle was no exception to what Pew calls the “typical election year surge” (Younis 2020).
On college campuses, this trend can be palpable as well, with students, faculty, and staff feeling more inclined to get involved in civic affairs in some way. Yet it can be difficult to know how to do so, especially on campuses where there is not already a robust civic participation infrastructure.
This article offers a retrospective on our incipient effort in fall 2024 at SUNY Plattsburgh to grow an organization – dubbed simply Plattsburgh Votes – to educate students (in a nonpartisan manner) about voting and to ultimately boost turnout. This is intended to provide guidance for others seeking to galvanize student voting and to create a foundational civic infrastructure on their own campuses for future election cycles. It outlines our approach to conceptualizing student voter engagement, details some key organizational support that is widely accessible to campuses, and reflects on the relative success of different methods of outreach to students.
Understanding the Student Voter Gap
The perception that the latest cohort of young adults is somehow less civically-inclined or interested in politics and current events is, ironically, a trope that recurs with each successive generation. Survey data, however, seem to contradict this notion for members of both the Millennial Generation and Generation Z. According to the American National Election Survey (a reputable source of data widely utilized by political scientists) for instance, young voters (defined as people aged 18-29) in fact show higher levels of interest in elections and public affairs since the turn of the millennium compared to what they reported on surveys conducted between 1976 and 2000 (Holbein and Hillygus 2020, 9).
In this vein, when conceptualizing Plattsburgh Votes, my collaborator Dr. Daniel Lake (Associate Professor of Political Science) and I channeled the framework for understanding young voters’ behavior offered by political scientists John Holbein and Sunshine Hillygus. Hillygus and Holbein note that while young people indeed exhibit a threshold level of interest in elections and civic affairs, there is still a disconnect between these attitudes and their rates of actual voting. Further, many of them intend to vote, but simply do not manage to – a gap that reaches 30% in some ANES data. As the authors summarize the situation, “young people are not turned off by politics…and yet they are not voting in US elections” (Holbein and Hillygus 2020, 8).
To explain the disconnect, they point to what behavioral scientists call “noncognitive skills” as the key impediment to voting among young people. The definition of noncognitive skills varies by context, but they generally refer to “patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior” rather than cognitive aptitudes like reasoning, understanding, and problem solving” (Bjorklund-Young 2016). Noncognitive skills are critical in what Hillygus and Holbein call “follow through” for young people in navigating the practical obstacles and time costs associated with voting, which can be formidable for those unfamiliar with the system (Holbein and Hillygus 2020, 14).
Our voter education efforts at SUNY Plattsburgh were therefore oriented toward ameliorating some of these practical barriers to voting, and in the process, helping reinforce the cultivation of the noncognitive skills that students need in order to be civically engaged.
Helping Students Navigate Location-Based Voting Decisions
One reality that became apparent very quickly is that students largely do not have difficulty registering to vote in some capacity before they arrive at college. Our on-the-ground experience echoed the data for our campus tabulated by the National Study of Voting, Learning, and Engagement (NSLVE) project at Tufts University, which is available for most campuses in the United States (National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement 2025). Our latest NSLVE data indicated a registration rate above 70 percent even during the 2022 midterm election cycle. Whether this is due to efforts by K-12 institutions, the success of “motor voter” laws that enable registration when applying for a driver license or other ID, or some other factor, a large majority of the students we contacted through various outreach efforts indeed reported that they were already registered to vote. This of course has implications for how we address our practical guidance: if the majority of them are successfully registered, what is it that they still need help with?
Our experience with Plattsburgh Votes indicates that possibly the most significant remaining hurdle is young people’s relative lack of awareness that voting is a location-specific activity. Perhaps the most important work conducted by our organization involved the tabling efforts, class visits, and digital outreach geared specifically toward helping students make proactive decisions about where they wanted to vote (using either their home or college address), to check where they were indeed registered, and to request absentee ballots. Yet judging by the volume of students who were still unaware that these options required decisive action before a deadline, it is clear that earlier and more emphatic efforts are necessary to help students actually follow through on their intentions.
Peer-to-Peer Outreach: What Worked—and What Didn’t
Another significant takeaway from the fall 2024 initiative concerns the importance of peer influence in student voter education. As Dr. Allison Rank, a political scientist, veteran organizer, and director of SUNY Oswego’s robust “Vote Oswego” initiative emphasized in guidance to our group, students are more receptive to information delivered face-to-face by a peer than from faculty or another authority figure in any medium. Thanks to our submission of an action plan with the All-In Democracy Challenge – which “outline[s] a campus’ landscape, leadership team, goals, strategies and tactics, and evaluation processes” for encouraging voter participation – we were consequently eligible to apply for and receive a mini-grant from All-In that was used to hire three student interns (ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge 2025). Using collectively generated presentations and educational material, these interns took the lead in delivering our in-person educational outreach efforts during the fall 2024 semester.
Yet we learned quickly that in-person outreach efforts led by student peers still must be strategically responsive to the realities of how students apportion their time and attention. Informational classroom visits by student advocates can be especially effective because students can be coached through a process like (re-)registering or requesting a ballot on the spot, minimizing the need for subsequent steps to be completed on their own. To that end, our group likewise concluded that it behooves organizers to focus classroom visits on one discrete process (e.g. “requesting a ballot to vote by mail”) rather than delivering a presentation that covers all relevant aspects of voting comprehensively.
Other forms of outreach were less successful, however. For instance, the student interns reported dismal attendance at the “voting office hours” that they held in common areas of the college residence buildings. While it is possible that our method of publicizing their availability through emails from the residence life director was suboptimal in garnering student attention, the experience also seemed to indicate significant reluctance on the part of students to plan in advance to seek out help and proactively ask questions. Instead, approaches in which the voter education organization’s representatives initiate the contact seem more promising.
The Untapped Power of Pledges
Finally, one tactic which Plattsburgh Votes did not have the time or resources to pursue extensively in fall 2024 was securing pledges from students to take particular voting actions.
Both research as well as conventional wisdom in grassroots organizing holds that people are generally more likely to follow through on an action when they have pledged to take it. Political science researchers testing whether pledging to vote affected voter turnout in fact found specifically that first-time young voters were likeliest to follow through and vote when they pledged to (Costa, Schaffner, and Prevost 2018). It seems promising, then, for both our organization and any others engaging in student voter education to brainstorm methods of soliciting pledges from students and then following up to remind them of their pledges as deadlines approach.
The campus-specific data on 2024 voter turnout from NSLVE is not yet available. Preliminary reports from the CIRCLE organization at Tufts (which administers the program) estimates that youth turnout in 2024 was down from 2020 to a rate of around 42%, but was stronger in battleground states like Pennsylvania (Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement 2025).We are confident that Plattsburgh Votes was able to have some impact on closing the gap between registration rate and actual voter turnout, but the precise magnitude remains to be seen. Regardless, it is clear that continued effort on campuses is necessary. The efforts must find creative, contextually-sensitive ways to account for the role that “noncognitive skills” play in affecting voting behavior and help students with the procedural aspects of voting so that they can successfully follow through on their intentions.
Dr. Ben Medeiros is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at SUNY Plattsburgh. His teaching and research focus on political communication, media law, and digital media culture. Medeiros is on the editorial board of the journal Communication & Democracy and the author of the book Reputation Management Online: America’s ‘Right To Be Forgotten’ (Routledge/National Communication Association, 2022).
Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. “The Youth Vote in 2024.” CIRCLE. Accessed June 18, 2025. https://circle.tufts.edu/2024-election.
Costa, Mia, Brian F. Schaffner, and Alicia Prevost. “Walking the Walk? Experiments on the Effect of Pledging to Vote on Youth Turnout.” PLoS One 13, no. 5 (May 29, 2018): e0197066. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0197066.
Holbein, John B., and D. Sunshine Hillygus. Making Young Voters: Converting Civic Attitudes into Civic Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement. “About NSLVE.” National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement. Accessed June 18, 2025. https://nslve.tufts.edu/about-us.
Crises are an inevitable part of leadership, challenging the resilience of both leaders and institutions. In these moments, leaders must make tough decisions under immense pressure, and how we respond can shape the outcome of the crisis and the legacy we leave behind. It’s not just about surviving the storm but also about learning from it, adapting and coming out stronger on the other side.
The lessons shared in this essay provide practical guidance to help higher education leaders face crises with clarity and purpose, from fostering open communication to prioritizing the well-being of your team. These insights reflect hard-earned experiences and are grounded in the values that carry us forward, even when the path feels uncertain.
Be the Buffalo
Have you heard the story of the buffalo? When a storm approaches, many animals instinctively run away from the storm. But because storms move swiftly, by running away, they can prolong their exposure when the storm catches up to them. Buffalo, however, face storms head-on, running into them instead of away from them, minimizing their time in adversity.
In crisis leadership, this means confronting the situation directly often resolves it faster and builds resilience. Sometimes, that means intentionally thinking about what is happening, giving yourself time to process it and trying to accept the reality. Avoid the temptation to ignore problems or hope they dissipate on their own. Acknowledge reality, process the pain and release its grip on your focus. Facing a crisis with courage and clarity accelerates recovery and strengthens leadership.
Keep the End in Mind
From the moment the crisis begins, envision what recovery looks like. Protect your institution and team while safeguarding critical relationships. This mindset helps you pivot from managing the immediate challenges to laying the groundwork for a return to normalcy and stability. Avoid impulsive decisions that can have long-term consequences.
Equally important is how you support your team, particularly those who are on the front lines of the crisis, feeling its weight acutely. By keeping the end in mind, you can better prioritize your team’s well-being. For instance, ensure they have the resources, communication and guidance they need to navigate the storm. Protect them from unnecessary fallout by taking on more external pressure when possible. A team that feels supported and valued during a crisis will emerge better and more unified in its aftermath.
Also stay mindful of your future self—the leader who will look back on this period and assess the outcomes and the approach. Treat every interaction carefully, knowing that future collaboration often depends on how you conduct yourself during difficult times.
Do the Next Right Thing
In a crisis, the path forward often feels murky and overwhelming and the pressure to anticipate every possible scenario can be paralyzing. Simplify your focus: Break the challenge into manageable steps and identify the next critical decision. For instance, in a financial crisis, the next right thing might be to prioritize cost-cutting measures. Ask, “What is the next right thing?” and then focus on that.
In other words, break the challenge into manageable steps and identify the next critical decision. Not every decision carries the same weight; some choices will matter more than others in the short term. Taking a moment to identify what requires immediate action versus what can wait is essential. Trust your instincts and lean on your values.
Remember, no single decision will end a crisis, but a series of thoughtful, well-executed actions can. By consistently doing the next right thing, you’ll build momentum, foster confidence and guide your institution toward recovery.
Rise Above the Fray
Crises test your composure. When you’re down and out and your back is against the wall, it is natural to want to fight back—to stand up for yourself or defend your organization. While the instinct to protect or retaliate can be strong, rising above the fray—staying calm, measured and professional—reflects well on you and your organization. Your actions during a crisis set the tone for your team and how external stakeholders perceive your leadership. By maintaining your composure, you can instill a sense of control and confidence in your team and stakeholders.
During a crisis, emotions often run high and others may act in ways that disappoint or frustrate you. These moments are as much a reflection of their character as they are a test of your own. Respond with integrity and intention, ensuring actions align with your values. Anchor yourself fairly and professionally, leading by example. How you act in these moments defines your leadership and shapes your legacy.
Seek Help Early
No leader faces a crisis alone. When a storm comes, take a moment to think, “Who might be able to help me?” Asking for help from legal counsel, crisis communication experts or trusted advisers is essential. These professionals offer critical perspectives and solutions. By involving them early, you give yourself and your team the advantage of informed, strategic guidance.
Equally important is leaning on your network and reaching out to colleagues who have faced similar challenges for their lessons learned, moral support and practical insights to help you navigate the complexity of the crisis. Asking for help is a strength, not a weakness, and ensures you emerge from the crisis with relationships and trust intact.
Rethink Public Relations in the Age of Social Media
There was a time when saying “no comment” or ignoring a media inquiry was the worst kind of public relations. Traditional public relations strategies may not apply in today’s social media–driven world. Not every media inquiry or rumor warrants a response. Prioritize credible sources and local media relationships critical to your institution’s reputation.
Avoid the trap of engaging with nonconstructive voices. Strategic silence can sometimes be the best action, allowing your focus to remain on the broader recovery effort.
Support the Core and Reassure the Whole
Crises often pressure a core team—typically leadership and crisis managers. Support these individuals with clear communication, resources and guidance. A supported core team can act decisively and confidently, which is essential for effective crisis management.
At the same time, safeguard your broader community—your students, employees and other stakeholders—by shielding them from unnecessary distractions, allowing them to stay focused on the institution’s vision and mission. Clear, empathetic communication reassures stakeholders and sustains trust, morale and well-being.
This Too Shall Pass—Find the Lessons
Crises feel all-encompassing at the moment—when you’re in the thick of it, it is easy to think life will never be the same again—but they are temporary. Remind yourself that leadership and life will return to normal.
Once the storm passes, reflect on the experience. Adversity shapes us, often in ways we don’t immediately recognize. What lessons has this crisis taught you about leadership, resilience and institutional dynamics? Growth frequently emerges from adversity, preparing you for future challenges.
Take Care of Yourself
When a crisis hits, dealing with that crisis becomes your sole focus. Self-care during a crisis is both essential and challenging. Your capacity to lead diminishes without rest, nutrition and mental reprieve. Prioritize habits that sustain you while giving yourself grace. Some things—like a full inbox or a missed task—can wait.
Strong habits built before crises ensure you have the reserves needed for long-term endurance. Leadership, like endurance, depends on maintaining your strength for the long haul.
Manage Stakeholders Thoughtfully and Lead With Humility
Crises reshuffle priorities; stakeholder needs will inevitably shift. Identify the most impacted and influential, tailoring communication to meet their needs. Internal stakeholders often need reassurance, while external groups may require clarity, particularly when misinformation or media scrutiny complicates the narrative.
Crises also remind us of our fallibility. Adopt humility and seek diverse perspectives to uncover blind spots and improve decision-making. Leading with humility signals strength, not weakness. It demonstrates that you value thoughtful, intentional leadership over impulsive reactions and earns the trust and respect of those you serve.
Final Thoughts
Crisis leadership is both a test and a teacher. The lessons it imparts— about resilience, humility and strategic focus—are hard-earned but invaluable. By embracing these principles, leaders can survive crises and emerge more self-aware and better prepared for future challenges.
Janet N. Spriggs, Ed.D., is president of Forsyth Technical Community College in North Carolina.Paula Dibley, Ed.D., is chief officer of student success and strategic innovation at Forsyth Technical Community College.
