Tag: Making

  • Making sense of specialisation: what the Post-16 White Paper means for university identity

    Making sense of specialisation: what the Post-16 White Paper means for university identity

    Over the weekend we published blogs on the art of reimagining universities and on why the TEF could collapse under the weight of DfE and the OfS’ expectations.

    Today’s blog was kindly authored by Nick Barthram, Strategy Partner at Firehaus and Merry Scott Jones, Transformation Partner at Firehaus and Associate Lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London.

    It is the tenth  blog in HEPI’s series responding to the post-16 education and skills white paper. You can find the other blogs in the series here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

    The government’s Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper sets a new tone for tertiary education in England. It is not just another skill or funding reform. It is a statement of intent about how universities, colleges, and employers should work together to build the country’s economic capability.

    The paper sets out a broad reform agenda built around stronger employer collaboration, higher-quality technical education, and a more flexible lifelong learning system. Initiatives such as Local Skills Improvement Plans and the Lifelong Learning Entitlement illustrate how the system is being reshaped to enable post-16 institutions to play distinct, complementary roles within a shared ecosystem of skills and innovation. All of this will unfold against a backdrop of constrained funding, uneven regional capacity, and growing regulatory pressure, making clarity of role more important than the White Paper itself acknowledges.

    While the paper avoids overt market language, the phrase comparative advantage does a lot of work. It invites universities to reflect on what they are best at and how that compares with others, without requiring them to openly compete. The intention is clear: to encourage institutions to define, and then demonstrate, their unique value. This is not new thinking. Advance HE, supported by a sector steering group including representation from AHUA, CUC, Guild HE and UUK, published a discussion paper last year on Measuring What Matters, exploring institutional performance and the importance of evidencing and communicating value creation.

    For some, that will mean sharper choices about subjects, audiences, partnerships, and purpose. For others, it will be about aligning their contribution to regional priorities. Not every university serves its region in the same way. The most prestigious universities will act as lighthouses, shaping national and international ecosystems through research and innovation. Others will play a more local role, deepening their community impact and supporting regional industry.

    The common thread is focus. Universities can no longer rely on breadth as a badge of strength. The challenge now is to identify what makes their contribution distinct and coherent, and to express that with clarity.

    From strategy to articulation

    Responding to the White Paper will be a demanding process. It will call for rigorous analysis, evidence-gathering, and an honest evaluation of institutional strengths and weaknesses. It will also require a sophisticated understanding of stakeholders’ and audiences’ needs. And of course, diplomacy will be required to manage the trade-offs that follow. Every decision will carry consequences for identity, culture, and relationships.

    In time, many universities will produce credible strategies: detailed statements of focus, lists of priorities, and maps of partnerships. But the real risk is stopping there. Institutional strategy alone will not create coherence.

    Universities often complete strategic work and then move straight to execution, adding imagery or campaigns before uniting everything around a purpose that aligns what you offer and who it’s for. The step that often gets missed is articulation – translating strategic intent into something people can understand, believe in, and act on.

    The White Paper calls for coherence across regions and the sector. Universities need to mirror that with coherence within their own walls. When purpose, culture, and communication line up behind a shared sense of direction, policy responses become practice, not just strategy. And this, fundamentally, is what the Government is seeking.

    The groundwork for meeting these changes is only just beginning, with many hard yards still to come. While covering that ground, there are lessons from outside the sector worth remembering.

    1. Specialisation  is relative
      A university’s strengths mean little in isolation. What matters is how those strengths stand out within the broader system of institutions, partners, and employers. Understanding where your work overlaps with others and where it uniquely contributes is essential. Knowing what not to do is often as important as knowing where to lead.
    1. Demand is defined by more than the UK Government
      The White Paper rightly highlights the importance of the national industrial strategy in shaping what is ‘in demand’. But universities should also consider the needs and motivations of their wider audiences: students, partners, and communities. Clarity about who your work matters to is as important as clarity about what that work is.
    1. Purpose must be expressed, not just defined
      Defining purpose is a strategic exercise; expressing it is an act of leadership. Purpose that remains on paper does not change behaviour, attract talent, or inspire partners. It must be made visible and tangible across everything the institution says and does, from how staff describe their work to how the university presents itself to the world.
    1. Perception matters as much as reality
      Universities are naturally driven by research and evidence. Yet specialisation is as much about being perceived as specialised as it is about being so in practice. The most successful institutions will work not only to build genuine expertise but also to occupy space in their audiences’ hearts and minds. Shifting perception requires consistency in both story and substance.
    1. Alignment is critical to success
      The institutions that succeed will be those that align intent, culture, and message. When leadership, staff, and students share a single understanding of what the university stands for, decision-making becomes simpler, collaboration easier, and communication more powerful. Alignment is not achieved through a campaign but through ongoing dialogue and consistent behaviour.

    A catalyst for clarity

    The Post-16 White Paper is ultimately a call for focus. For universities, that means not only deciding where they fit but demonstrating that fit clearly and consistently to students, partners, and staff.

    Those who stop at strategy will adapt. Those who move beyond it — articulating their role with confidence, coherence, and conviction — will help define what a purposeful, modern university looks like in the decade ahead.

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  • Making higher education work for international student carers

    Making higher education work for international student carers

    Student carers – those juggling unpaid caring for family or friends, as well as student parents – can often feel invisible to their higher education provider. Their needs cut across multiple areas, including attendance, assessment, finances and mental health, with many (quietly) facing the complicated arithmetic of balancing time, money and labour.

    It is not only UK-domiciled students that face these challenges. Little addressed in the academic literature, international student carers face challenges both similar to and distinct from those experienced by UK home students.

    Similar and distinct

    Student carers of all nationalities describe disrupted attendance when emergencies arise, lost concentration, as well as difficult trade-offs between paid work and academic engagement.

    Uncertainty amplifies these pressures: some students simply choose not to disclose information about their caregiving because of fear of stigma; others do not trust staff to handle with care what is a personal and sensitive dimension of their lives; still others do not know where to seek support.

    Identifying carers, therefore, is a necessary first step to providing support. However, it is not always straightforward – institutions commonly lack routine, reliable data on caring status, making targeted support ad hoc rather than systemic.

    Yet international student carers face additional, distinctive barriers that make the same problems harder to resolve. Visa rules are an illustrative example. These restrict when dependants can accompany students and cap the number of hours most international students can work during term-time.

    For instance, students on degree-level courses can generally work up to 20 hours per week, while those on foundation and pre-sessional English routes are limited to ten hours. Self-employment is not permitted, and internships or placements must be approved by the sponsor.

    For those caring for family overseas, emotional load and logistical complexity are high: families divide care across borders, rely on remittances, and use digital tools to coordinate support at distance. For those caring for dependants present in the UK, the absence of recourse to public funds combined with the limitations set on working hours further intensify financial challenges. These are not abstract constraints – students I have spoken to flagged the restriction on working hours as a core stressor that diverted their attention from study.

    Making it work

    The UK policy context matters as it shapes what universities can and cannot do. While recent changes have tightened dependant rules for international students, universities still retain a significant degree of agency. These include proactive identification of student carers, flexible design of learning and assessment, targeted financial and career advice, as well as culturally sensitive outreach.

    What does this look like in practice? First, it is time that institutions recognise that disclosure is not a single moment, but a process requiring trust. Rather than a “pray-and-hope” approach where students are asked to declare their caring status on a single form, universities should try to normalise conversations across the student lifecycle: in admissions, enrolment, welcome activities, academic tutorials and welfare checks. Staff training plays an important role here. Academic and professional services teams need concise guidance on how to spot signs of caring, how to ask sensitively, and how to go about making reasonable adjustments, be that through a Carer Passport or other means. This helps reduce the pressure on student carers to self-advocate.

    Next, administrative burden needs to be reduced as much as possible – student carers are often acutely time poor. Tools like the just mentioned Carer Passport can help here by making informal agreements more formal and removing the need (and burden) of repeated disclosure.

    Reasonable adjustments might include extended deadlines, alternative attendance arrangements, priority access to recorded lectures or seminar times. The design of such initiatives should not blindside carers, they should be involved in the development process. This co-production may also help tackle the trust deficit.

    Third, financial and careers support must be tailored to visa realities. Generic money advice may be helpful, but is likely insufficient for international student carers’ needs, given the restrictions on working hours and access to benefits. One support route, if budgets allow, could be targeted bursaries, hardship funding that consider caring costs, and career advice that specifically addresses visa limits and limits of working hours. Partnerships with external funds and local community organisations could also be beneficial.

    And finally, community can provide another support mechanism. Peer networks, carers’ groups and targeted social spaces allow student carers, particularly international ones who may be far from family networks, to share coping strategies and practical tips. These groups also provide powerful evidence to inform policy change within universities: student testimony should feed directly into institutional planning, not sit in a file.

    The effort required

    None of the above requires revolutionary or even radical institutional reinvention – though it does demand time and allocation of resources. That said, I would contend that the efforts are worth it for a couple of reasons.

    The first is that supporting international student carers is simply a matter of fairness. Secondly, but of equal importance, universities that make study feasible for (international) student carers will stand a better chance of attracting and retaining talent that might otherwise never apply or withdraw.

    The absence of international student carers means a loss of enriching perspectives in the classroom – and conversely their presence entails a stronger evidence base from which to build inclusive practice.

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  • Making creative practice research visible

    Making creative practice research visible

    I still remember walking into my first Association of Media Practice Educators conference, sometime around the turn of the millennium.

    I was a very junior academic, wide-eyed and slightly overwhelmed. Until that point, I’d assumed research lived only in books and journals.

    My degree had trained me to write about creative work, not to make it.

    That event was a revelation. Here were filmmakers, designers, artists, and teachers talking about the doing as research – not as illustration or reflection, but as knowledge in its own right. There was a sense of solidarity, even mischief, in the air. We were building something together: a new language for what universities could call research.

    When AMPE eventually merged with MeCCSA – the Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association – some of us worried that the fragile culture of practice would be swallowed by traditional academic habits. I remember standing in a crowded coffee queue at that first joint conference, wondering aloud whether practice would survive.

    It did. But it’s taken twenty-five years to get here.

    From justification to circulation

    In the early days, the fight was about legitimacy. We were learning to write short contextual statements that translated installations, performances, and films into assessable outputs. The real gatekeeper was always the Research Excellence Framework. Creative practice researchers learned to speak REF – to evidence, contextualise, and theorise the mess of creative making.

    Now that argument is largely won. REF 2021 explicitly recognised practice research. Most universities have templates, repositories, and internal mentors to support it. There are still a few sceptics muttering about rigour, but they’re the exception, not the rule.

    If creative practice makes knowledge, the challenge today is not justification. It’s circulation.

    Creative practice is inherently cross-disciplinary. It doesn’t sit neatly in the subject silos that shape our academic infrastructure. Each university has built its own version of a practice research framework – its own forms, repositories, and metadata – but the systems don’t talk to one another. Knowledge that begins in the studio too often ends up locked inside an institutional database, invisible to the rest of the world.

    A decade of blueprints

    Over the past few years, a string of national projects has tried to fix that.

    PRAG-UK, funded by Research England in 2021, mapped the field and called for a national repository, metadata standards, and a permanent advisory body. It was an ambitious vision that recognised practice research as mature and ready to stand alongside other forms of knowledge production.

    Next came Practice Research Voices and SPARKLE in 2023 – both AHRC-funded, both community-driven. PR Voices, led by the University of Westminster, tested a prototype repository built on the Cayuse platform. It introduced the idea of the practice research portfolio – a living collection that links artefacts, documentation, and narrative. SPARKLE, based at Leeds with the British Library and EDINA, developed a technical roadmap for a national infrastructure, outlining how such a system might actually work.

    And now we have ENACT – the Practice Research Data Service, funded through UKRI’s Digital Research Infrastructure programme and again led by Westminster. ENACT’s job is to turn all those reports into something real: a national, interoperable, open data service that makes creative research findable, accessible, and reusable. For the first time, practice research is being treated as part of the UK’s research infrastructure, not a quirky sideshow to it.

    A glimpse of community

    In June 2025, Manchester Metropolitan University hosted The Future of Practice Research. For once, everyone was in the same room – the PRAG-UK authors, the SPARKLE developers, the ENACT team, funders, librarians, and plenty of curious researchers. We swapped notes, compared schemas, and argued cheerfully about persistent identifiers.

    It felt significant – a moment of coherence after years of fragmentation. For a day, it felt like we might actually build a network that could connect all these efforts.

    A few weeks later, I found myself giving a talk for Loughborough University’s Capturing Creativity webinar series. Preparing for that presentation meant gathering up a decade of my own work on creative practice research – the workshops I’ve designed, the projects I’ve evaluated, the writing I’ve done to help colleagues articulate their practice as research. In pulling all that together, I realised how cyclical this story is.

    Back at that first AMPE conference, we were building a community from scratch. Today, we’re trying to build one again – only this time across digital platforms, data standards, and research infrastructure.

    The policy challenge

    If you work in research management, this is your problem too. Practice research now sits comfortably inside the REF, but not inside the systems that sustain the rest of academia. We have no shared metadata standards, no persistent identifiers for creative outputs, and no national repository.

    Every university has built its own mini-ecosystem. None of them connect.

    The sector needs collective leadership – from UKRI, the AHRC, Jisc, and Universities UK – to treat creative practice research as shared infrastructure. That means long-term funding, coordination across institutions, and skills investment for researchers, librarians, and digital curators.

    Without that, we’ll keep reinventing the same wheel in different corners of the country.

    Coming full circle

    Pulling together that presentation for Capturing Creativity reminded me how far we’ve come – and how much remains undone. We no longer need to justify creative practice as research. But we still need to build the systems, the culture, and the networks that let it circulate.

    Because practice research isn’t just another output type. It’s the imagination of the academy made visible.

    And if the academy can’t imagine an infrastructure worthy of its own imagination, then we really haven’t learned much from the last twenty-five years.

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  • Men in Nursing: Making Strides and Picking Up the Pace

    Men in Nursing: Making Strides and Picking Up the Pace

    Bringing more men into nursing goes beyond addressing shortages; it represents a critical step toward a more balanced and equitable healthcare system.

    Beverly Malone, Ph.D., RN, FAAN

    President and CEO, National League for Nursing (NLN)

    While nobody alive today can recall this, throughout its early history, men dominated the field of nursing. All that changed when men went off to fight the Civil War, and women trained as nurses stepped in to take their places in hospitals on the battlefield and on the home front. 

    After that, the scarcity of men in nursing has persisted for 165 years and counting. In 1970, when men in nursing hit an all-time low, only 2.7% of the nursing workforce was male, according to the American Nurses Association.    

    With increased attention to this imbalance, the number of men choosing to enter nursing has been inching upward, with the greatest jumps posted since the dawn of the 21st century. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that in 2002, men accounted for 7% of RNs, LPNs, and NPs. Now, over 20 years later, BLS statistics show about 12% of nurses are male. 

    The National League of Nursing’s Annual Survey of Schools of Nursing, which represents nursing programs across the spectrum of higher education, confirms this promising trend, with increasing male enrollment in basic RN programs. In 2022-23, the latest survey data available, just over 14% of nursing students identified as men, an uptick from the prior year.

    Most recently, men have even broken barriers in nursing leadership. The American Nurses Association elected its first male president, Dr. Ernest Grant, in 2018. Just recently, the National League for Nursing (NLN) membership elected Dr. Paul Smith, dean of the Linfield-Good Samaritan School of Nursing at Linfield University, as the League’s first male NLN Chair-Elect, breaking new ground in nursing education history.

    Building a more balanced workforce

    All that said, it may be asked, “Why is it even important to attract more men to nursing?” In the current nursing shortage, our nation cannot afford to ignore a potentially enormous job applicant pool. Nearly half of the U.S. adult population — 49% according to the 2020 Census — is male.

    Beyond sheer numbers, men of all racial and ethnic backgrounds bring to the profession different life experiences and perspectives. Research indicates that patients tend to be more open and responsive to health professionals who share physical, psycho-social, and cultural characteristics with them. So, with the need for greater diversity in nursing, how can we move the needle even more quickly? 

    Public service campaigns targeted specifically to men that promote the career pathways, benefits, and rewards of nursing can be effective and should be amplified across both traditional and social media. This will require sustained, coordinated efforts and financial investment by all stakeholders, including health and hospital systems, schools of nursing, professional associations, federal and state agencies, public health foundations, and industry partners. 

    Another key to making the nursing workforce more diverse and inclusive is to diversify nursing faculty and leadership in nursing education. As matters stand, men are vastly underrepresented among nurse educators, comprising only 8% of full-time faculty. But opportunities abound, with more than 800 vacant positions budgeted and 86% of programs that participated in the NLN survey pursuing new hires. 

    Male nursing graduates of the future need mentors and support to inspire, affirm, and nurture them, and to guide them to achieve their full potential to make a real difference in the health of the nation and the global community.

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  • Universities as infrastructures of support: making the Solent Film Office happen

    Universities as infrastructures of support: making the Solent Film Office happen

    UK universities are under mounting financial pressure. Join HEPI and King’s College London Policy Institute today at 1pm for a webinar on how universities balance relatively stable but underfunded income streams against higher-margin but volatile sources. Register now. We look forward to seeing you there.

    This blog was kindly authored by Dr Roy Hanney, Associate Professor at Southampton Solent University.

    The launch of the new Solent and South Hampshire Regional Film Office marks a major step forward for the region’s creative economy. Funded by Solent Growth Partners and driven by a consortium of local authorities and cultural development agencies, the film office will provide a single point of contact for productions, market the region as a go-to location for filming and open up new opportunities for local businesses and talent.

    Behind the scenes of this development is a quieter story – one of research, knowledge exchange, and the often-unseen role universities play in helping ideas like this one take root and grow.

    From research to impact

    The idea of a regional film office did not emerge overnight. It was first identified in research carried out at Southampton Solent University as part of a Research, Innovation and Knowledge Exchange (RIKE) project between 2020 and 2021. It was a response to priorities set out in key strategy documents – including the Creative Network South Creative Industries Declaration and Arts Council England’s cultural strategy for Portsmouth – both of which highlighted the need for stronger infrastructure to support the creative economy.

    The RIKE project gathered evidence, brought together stakeholders, and produced a Theory of Change report for the screen industries in the Solent region. Among its recommendations was the establishment of a regional film office – not simply as an administrative function, but as a vital piece of creative infrastructure: connecting talent pipelines, supporting independent productions, promoting the region internationally, and providing a business case for sustained investment.

    This research provided the evidential basis for further strategic conversations through a series of Screen Industries Cluster meetings hosted in partnership with Fareham College, Creative Network South, and the Southern Policy Centre. These gatherings brought local authorities, policymakers, production companies, and cultural organisations into the same room to test ideas, compare models, and make informed decisions about what would help build our region’s creative economy.

    By December 2024, the Solent Screen Support Feasibility Study was launched, presenting a collaborative roadmap for a film office and confirming broad support across councils, cultural agencies, and regional development bodies.

    The enabling role of universities

    Universities are anchor institutions and, at every stage of this journey, Southampton Solent University played an important role of enablement. It’s often unseen, but it’s by no means any less key. And, by supporting my involvement in this project as part of my research and knowledge exchange remit, the University has created the conditions for academic insight to inform policy and practice.

    This is a subtle but essential contribution. Universities are uniquely placed to:

    • Provide research-led evidence that turns ideas into persuasive business cases.
    • Convene cross-sector conversations by offering neutral space and credibility.
    • Sustain continuity across the long timelines of public sector change.
    • Support thought leadership by connecting academic expertise with industry needs.

    The Solent Film Office is not a “university project” — it is a collaborative achievement led by local authorities and funded by Solent Growth Partners. Yet, it is also fair to say that without the groundwork of university research and facilitation, the momentum to make it happen may not have been sustained.

    A shared regional asset

    With FilmFixer now appointed to establish and operate the new agency, the Solent Film Office is set to work across nine local authority areas, providing a one-stop shop for production companies, marketing the region as a filming destination, and unlocking opportunities for skills development and local business engagement.

    For our university, the benefits are many and varied. Students will have access to an industry landscape that is better coordinated and more visible. Academics can continue to collaborate with policymakers and industry to shape sustainable growth. As a region, we stand to capture a greater share of the economic and cultural value generated by film and television production.

    Regional development? Universities are key

    The story of the Solent Film Office illustrates something bigger about the role of universities in regional development. Universities are not only educators and research producers. They are also infrastructures of support: institutions that provide the long-term stability, intellectual resources, and convening power necessary to get important initiatives off the ground.

    Infrastructures are rarely noticed until they are missing. In this case, the research, networks, and continuity provided by Solent have been crucial in helping partners move from strategy documents to a real, funded institution. The film office will stand as a visible achievement, and Solent’s contribution has been embedded in the process that made it possible.

    The success of the Solent Film Office reminds us that universities are not just ivory towers, but anchor institutions embedded in place. They provide the connective tissue that enables ideas to become reality. Sometimes, that makes all the difference.

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  • What Happens When We Start Making the Work Visible – Teaching in Higher Ed

    What Happens When We Start Making the Work Visible – Teaching in Higher Ed

    This post is one of many, related to my participation in  Harold Jarche’s Personal Knowledge Mastery workshop.

    Jarche informs us that when we narrate our work, we don’t experience knowledge transfer, but what we do get is greater understanding. Our individual, self-directed learning is difficult to codify, he explains, and is more focused on relationships and expertise. When we narrate our work, focusing on decisions and processes, we make that work more visible to others. This means we can experiment and share knowledge, learning together in real time. The results of this thinking together results in enterprise curation, where we can more easily codify knowledge and experience the results of our earlier efforts.

    network era knowledge flow individual mastery informs knowledge management Personal knowledge mastery (PKM) requires tools and time to seek, sense, and share knowledge

    The value of social bookmarks are hard to see, at first. However, over time, especially when combined with the use of feed aggregators and readers, we eventually get to witness the power of PKM as a discipline. I’ve been using Raindrop.io bookmarks for years, now, and enjoy having shareable bookmarks (which I can surface, when a situation encourages that practice), yet most of my collections are private. One that is now public is my growing collection of AI articles, in both an RSS feed and just a browsable page.

    I do find myself cringing a bit as I save items there, knowing that I certainly don’t endorse each link I save and the topic of AI is so controversial and polarizing. I’ve got everything up there from the world as we know it is crumbling to its core to fun hacks to use AI to build you a rocket ship to the moon (or load your dishwasher) or some such thing.

    Jarche states that our emphasis when we narrate our work should be on making our thinking accessible, but to avoid disrupting people with what we choose to share. He writes:

    The key is to narrate your work so it is shareable, but to use discernment in sharing with others. Also, to be good at narrating your work, you have to practice.

    One practice Jarche mentions under his tips and links section is to keep a journal. While I’ve not been good at this practice since my teenage years long ago, I did find many of these 6 Ways Keeping a Journal Can Help Your Career compelling. In Episode 425 of Teaching in Higher Ed, I share Viji Sathy’s and Kelly Hogan’s suggestion to keep a “Starfish” folder. There are variations of the beloved story of the starfish, including this Tale of the Starfish page from the Starfish Foundation with a powerful video describing the power in making a difference for a single starfish, even if we can’t rescue them all.

    I have kept up with digital encouragement folders for years now, both on my email accounts, as well as in my file directories (across my personal and professional domains). While not a journal, exactly, these stories and words can bring me encouragement during difficult times.

    I’ve been paying for the Day One Journal App for years now, though entirely languish in my practice of journaling. I would switch over to Obsidian, which has the benefit of future proofing any notes I take using Obsidian, since they are just text files sitting wherever I want them to be (as in if the app went away, the text files are still there and readable).

    However, Day One brings together all the TV and movies that I’ve watched, all my social media posts and images, and all the videos I’ve favorited on YouTube. I use Sequel to track what I want to watch, which then optionally integrates with the free Trakt service, which allows for an IFTTT rule to add an entry to Day One each time I mark something as watched in Sequel. In case you’re wondering about how I accomplish this, I found these two automations on IFTTT and never had to change a thing.

    Perhaps someday I’ll go down a rabbit trail of trying to figure out a longer-term, non-subscription based model for collecting all those memories across all those different services and not locking myself into DayOne. For now, I’m enjoying revisiting this glimpse of these two upside down kind of people from 2017….

    Two kids stand on their heads, upside down in a cushioned swivel chair

    …and then having this song from Jack Johnson start playing on the soundtrack of my mind for what I’m sure will last at least a few hours.

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  • Making the Most of College Fairs and High School Visits

    Making the Most of College Fairs and High School Visits

    A Practical Framework for Admissions Leaders to Reach More Students, More Meaningfully

    College fairs and high school visits have long been the bread and butter of admissions outreach. But are they still relevant in a digital age saturated with webinars, virtual tours, and TikTok campus tours?

    The answer is a resounding yes! The 2025 E-Expectations survey of college-bound high school students shows they rate these experiences as helpful and impactful, with fairs standing out as one of the most widely used resources in the college search (RNL, Halda, & ModernCampus, 2025).

    Here is the catch: just showing up is not enough. The latest research tells us that the true impact of fairs and visits depends on how thoughtfully they are designed, where institutions decide to spend their travel dollars, and, maybe most importantly, whether the students and families who need access the most are actually being reached (Huerta, 2020; Institute for Higher Education Policy [IHEP], 2021).

    This blog brings together three key perspectives, each offering a piece of the puzzle:

    • The student voice: What the latest E-Expectations data reveals about how students use and value fairs and visits.
    • Practice-level insights: What enrollment professionals and researchers like Huerta (2020) have learned about structuring these events so they support, rather than overwhelm, students.
    • Policy and systems view: How institutional budgets, recruitment, travel, and school selection practices shape which communities are included, or left out (IHEP, 2021; Niche, 2023).

    By weaving these perspectives together, my goal is simple: to offer admissions leaders a practical framework, a clear and actionable checklist, for designing and delivering college fairs and high school visits that truly serve the full range of students and families you want to reach.

    What students say about fairs and visits

    2025 E-Expectations Trend Report: Explore the online experiences, behaviors, and expectations of college-bound high school students2025 E-Expectations Trend Report: Explore the online experiences, behaviors, and expectations of college-bound high school students

    In the 2025 E-Expectations survey, 80% of respondents attended a college fair, and 85% of those found it helpful (RNL, Halda, & ModernCampus, 2025). Helpfulness peaks in 10th grade but stays strong from 9th (82%) through 12th (85%). First-generation students also find fairs helpful (86%).

    High school visits tell a similar story. Niche (2023) reports that over 70% of students say meeting an admissions representative at their school influenced their decision to consider a college. Campus visits are even more powerful: 85% said a visit nudged them to apply or enroll. The message is clear: students want in-person engagement even in the digital age.

    However, college recruiters visit suburban and affluent schools more often, leaving rural, urban, and first-generation students with fewer recruiter visits (Niche, 2023). If your travel schedule seems stuck on the same comfortable zip codes year after year, you are seeing this problem play out firsthand. The right students are not always getting the right opportunities.

    Reimagining college fairs for equity

    College fairs and campus visits are only helpful when they reach the students who actually need them. Huerta (2020) does not sugarcoat the gaps: “traditional college fairs often disproportionately serve White and affluent students, while low-income, first-generation, and students of color are left out of these critical opportunities for exposure and access” (p. 3).

    How can fairs and visits have a greater impact? Preparation is everything, especially for first-generation students. The right support before the fair can make all the difference. Huerta (2020) says it plainly: “Pre-fair activities such as setting up professional emails, preparing questions, or even taking short career tests equip students to maximize the limited time they have with recruiters” (p. 5). With a plan, the fair is less overwhelming and more empowering.

    What about addressing affordability questions during these activities? Huerta (2020) is clear: “Workshops on financial aid, scholarships, and affordability should be at the center of college fair programming, not optional add-ons” (p. 6). Put cost and aid front and center, and you not only build trust, you tackle one of the biggest barriers families face. If you have ever watched a parent’s shoulders relax after a frank talk about financial aid, you know this is not just theory—it is practical, high-impact work.

    Now picture a fair that feels like a true community event, a place where everyone belongs. Huerta (2020) recommends an equity checklist: multilingual resources, childcare, transportation, and intentional outreach. Suddenly, the fair is not just another recruitment event; it is a space where families actually feel welcome (p. 7). You are not just handing out brochures, you are opening doors.

    Enrollment and admissions implications

    • Go beyond the usual feeder and affluent schools and make a conscious effort to reach overlooked students.
    • Prepare students and families with guides and resources before the visit.
    • Strengthen access with multilingual support, childcare, and transportation options.
    • Measure success by engagement of underserved groups of students, not just attendance.

    Rethinking recruitment policies through the institutional lens

    Zooming out, let us talk about how big-picture policies and budgets shape everything from your team’s travel routes to who gets a seat at the table.

    Travel budgets shape access

    Recruitment travel is costly and eats up a large chunk of resources. Public institutions report spending a median of $536 per recruited student and close to $600,000 a year on enrollment management vendors (IHEP, 2021). Almost one-fifth of recruitment budgets go toward travel for high school visits and college fairs (p. 9). Every travel dollar is a map, deciding which schools and communities get face time with colleges.

    Over-investment in feeder and affluent schools

    IHEP (2021) does not mince words: colleges target suburban and affluent schools, reinforcing privilege, while rural, low-income, Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and AAPI students are left seeing fewer recruiters (p. 11). Nearly nine million students live in rural areas, but cost and assumptions about mobility keep colleges away (IHEP, 2021, p. 11). If you have ever skipped a rural or urban school because “it is too far” or “students from there do not enroll anyway,” you are not alone, but the pattern has real consequences.

    The “iron triangle” of prestige, revenue, and access

    IHEP (2021) calls the balancing of academic profile, revenue, and access the “iron triangle” of recruitment. Too often, access gets squeezed out by prestige or dollars. One example? The out-of-state recruitment push for higher tuition, which can crowd out in-state, low-income, and racially diverse students—the very populations public institutions were built to serve (IHEP, 2021, p. 10). There is a real tension here: the pressure to chase rankings and revenue versus the public mission to expand access.

    Enrollment and admissions implications

    Audit travel strategies so you don’t overlook rural, urban, and high first-generation schools.
    Resist the urge to chase rankings or revenue at the cost of access.
    Measure equity ROI to look at who you reached and not just enrollment numbers.
    Honor the public mission—for public institutions, especially, recruitment travel should put in-state, underrepresented, and transfer students first.

    The “Comprehensive Equity Checklist” for college fairs and high school visits

    (Adapted from Huerta, 2020; IHEP, 2021; Niche, 2023)

    If you are looking for a place to start, here is a checklist you can use to make sure your next fair or visit is as equitable and impactful as possible:

    Access and Inclusion

    • Provide multilingual materials (flyers, signage, applications, financial aid guides).
    • Offer live interpretation services for families with limited English proficiency.
    • Ensure transportation options (buses, metro passes, shuttles) for students and families.
    • Provide childcare or family-friendly spaces so parents and guardians can attend.
    • Make fairs and visits physically accessible (ADA-compliant venues, inclusive spaces).

    Student and Family Preparation

    • Equip students with pre-fair tools: professional email setup, question prompts, résumé templates, and career interest surveys.
    • Offer prep sessions for families on navigating fairs, admissions language, and understanding financial aid.
    • Provide clear expectations before high school visits (e.g., topics covered, documents to bring).

    Financial Aid and Affordability Resources

    • Make financial aid and scholarship workshops central, not optional, at fairs.
    • Ensure recruiters can clearly explain the cost of attendance, aid packages, scholarships, and ROI.
    • Share state aid and local scholarship resources during visits.
    • Provide simple, multilingual financial aid guides for families to take home.

    Recruiter Diversity and Training

    • Send representatives who reflect racial, ethnic, and linguistic diversity.
    • Train recruiters in cultural competency, equity, and family engagement strategies.
    • Encourage authentic, student-centered conversations rather than scripted pitches.
    • Pair senior admissions leaders with feeder schools while ensuring new schools also receive attention.

    Event and Visit Design

    • Avoid overwhelming “information overload” by structuring fairs with breakout sessions (e.g., Paying for College 101, Essay Writing Tips, Navigating Campus Visits).
    • Set up reflection areas where students can take notes and debrief.
    • Schedule visits that reach all grade levels, not just seniors, to build early awareness (9th–10th grade especially).
    • Balance large-scale fairs with smaller, targeted events for first-generation and underserved students.

    Travel Strategy and School Selection

    • Audit recruitment travel annually: which schools are visited and which are left out (rural, urban, high first-generation, under-resourced)?
    • Intentionally expand beyond feeder and affluent schools to reach underserved communities.
    • Balance in-state versus out-of-state recruitment to honor institutional missions and equity commitments.
    • Use hybrid and virtual visits to reach schools where travel is limited.

    Data, Metrics and Accountability

    • Collect and analyze participation data disaggregated by race, income, geography, and first-generation status.
    • Track equity ROI: not just attendance numbers, but who was reached and how engagement expanded access.
    • Report back annually to leadership with both quantitative metrics (schools visited, demographics reached) and qualitative feedback (student and counselor satisfaction).
    • Equitable recruitment means more than showing up. It requires intentional design, inclusive practices, and accountability. This checklist can help you ensure that your fairs and visits open doors, instead of reinforcing barriers.

    The bottom line: Opportunity by design

    College fairs and high school visits remain powerful entry points for students exploring higher education. The data is clear: students find them helpful, and when done well, these moments spark interest, build trust, and create momentum in the college search process. But as the research shows, the true impact depends on how these events are implemented and who gets to participate. Fairs that overwhelm students or focus only on affluent schools, and travel that bypasses rural or first-generation communities, risk narrowing opportunity rather than expanding it.

    Admissions leaders hold both the keys and the responsibility to change this. Rethink what success looks like. Expand your travel map beyond traditional feeder schools. Center on affordability and preparation on every visit. Use a comprehensive checklist to plan. If you do, you will reach more students, more meaningfully. Measure the value of college fairs and high school visits by the quality of the student and family experience, the strength of your partnerships with counselors, and the breadth of the communities you serve. In doing so, you will not just make the most of fairs and visits, you will reaffirm your mission to open doors of opportunity for every student who is ready to walk through them.

    Talk with our marketing and recruitment experts

    RNL works with colleges and universities across the country to ensure their marketing and recruitment efforts are optimized and aligned with how student search for colleges.  Reach out today for a complimentary consultation to discuss:

    • Student search strategies
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  • Making career readiness meaningful in today’s classrooms

    Making career readiness meaningful in today’s classrooms

    Key points:

    As a high school STEM teacher at Baldwin Preparatory Academy, I often ask myself: How can we make classroom learning more meaningful for our students? In today’s rapidly evolving world, preparing learners for the future isn’t about gathering academic knowledge. It is also about helping all learners explore potential careers and develop the future-ready skills that will support success in the “real world” beyond graduation.

    One way to bring those two goals together is by drawing a clear connection between what is learned in the classroom and future careers. In fact, research from the Education Insights Report shows that a whopping 87 percent of high school students believe that career connections make school engaging–and as we all know, deeper student engagement leads to improved academic growth.

    I’ve tried a lot of different tactics to get kids engaged in careers over my 9 years of teaching. Here are my current top recommendations:

    Internship opportunities
    As many educators know, hands-on learning is effective for students. The same goes for learning about careers. Internship opportunities give students a way to practice a career by doing the job.

    I advise students to contact local businesses about internships during the school year and summer. Looking local is a wonderful way to make connections, learn an industry, and practice career skills–all while gaining professional experience.

    Tallo is another good internship resource because it’s a digital network of internships across a range of industries and internship types. With everything managed in Tallo, it’s easy for high school students to find and get real-world work experience relevant to school learning and career goals. For educators, this resource is helpful because it provides pathways for students to gain employable skills and transition into the workforce or higher education.

    Career events
    In-person career events where students get to meet individuals in industries they are interested in are a great way for students to explore future careers. One initiative that stands out is the upcoming Futures Fair by Discovery Education. Futures Fair is a free virtual event on November 5, 2025, to inspire and equip students for career success.

    Held over a series of 30-minute virtual sessions, students meet with professionals from various industries sharing an overview of their job, industry, and the path they took to achieve it. Organizations participating in the Futures Fair are 3M, ASME, Clayco, CVS Health, Drug Enforcement Administration, Genentech, Hartford, Honda, Honeywell, Illumina, LIV Golf, Meta, Norton, Nucor, Polar Bears International, Prologis, The Home Depot, Verizon, and Warner Bros. Discovery.

    Students will see how the future-ready skills they are learning today are used in a range of careers. These virtual sessions will be accompanied by standards-aligned, hands-on student learning tasks designed to reinforce the skills outlined by industry presenters. 

    CTE Connections
    All students at Baldwin Preparatory Academy participate in a career and technical education pathway of their choosing, taking 6-9 career specific credits, and obtaining an industry-recognized credential over the course of their secondary education. As a STEM teacher, I like to connect with my CTE and core subject colleagues to learn about the latest innovations in their space. Then I connect those innovations to my classroom instruction so that all students get the benefit of learning about new career paths.

    For example, my industry partners advise me about the trending career clusters that are experiencing significant growth in job demand. These are industries like cybersecurity, energy, and data science. With this insight, I looked for relevant reads or classroom activities related to one of those clusters. Then, I shared the resources back with my CTE and core team so there’s an easy through line for the students.

    As educators, our role extends beyond teaching content–we’re shaping futures. Events like Futures Fair and other career readiness programs help students see the relevance of their learning and give them the confidence to pursue their goals. With resources like these, we can help make career readiness meaningful, engaging, and empowering for every student.

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  • From Task Completion to Cognitive Engagement: Making the Case for the Hourglass Paradigm of Learning – Faculty Focus

    From Task Completion to Cognitive Engagement: Making the Case for the Hourglass Paradigm of Learning – Faculty Focus

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  • From Task Completion to Cognitive Engagement: Making the Case for the Hourglass Paradigm of Learning – Faculty Focus

    From Task Completion to Cognitive Engagement: Making the Case for the Hourglass Paradigm of Learning – Faculty Focus

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