Higher ed marketing trends shaping an already high-stakes 2025.

Believe it or not, we’re already a quarter of the way through 2025.

The first few months have been a flurry of activity—the dismantling of the Department of Education, the fight against DEI, the call for leadership responses, and the growing role of AI in all aspects of the higher education journey, including admissions and the search cliff. And while the pace shows no signs of slowing, now is a good time to take stock of the bigger picture.

Last year, we explored the key marketing trends shaping higher education, from personalization and influencer partnerships to AI-driven content and immersive experiences. Those trends haven’t disappeared, but they’ve evolved in response to an increasingly polarized landscape, shifting student expectations, and rapid technological advancements.

What’s shaping the future of higher ed marketing and leadership? From the fight for authentic branding to the push for pluralism, the challenge of reaching adult learners, and the need for institutions to take a stand, the road ahead demands strategy and adaptability.

We asked some of higher ed’s sharpest voices (and regular Volt contributors) to share their insights on what’s next. Here’s what they had to say.

Brands with a Pulse Will Win 2025

Joseph Master

I have an exercise for you, dear reader … Google “colleges near me.” Now, search for “undergraduate degrees near me.”

I don’t care where you are, what you’ll see is a wall of words in linguistic beige: phrases that are so similar that they are utterly devoid of meaning. 

This is what our prospective students and families often see as a first touchpoint because this is what we’re marketing. And marketing is the operative word because we are swimming in data about the most cost-effective inbound and outbound ways to entice clicks and conversions. But wouldn’t it be better for us to try to truly connect with our audiences more so we can market less?

I believe we’re working through real-time reckoning as marketers. Product, price, place and promotion are taking hits from all angles, and it ain’t pretty. That’s why we need to get back to that fifth “P” as marketers: People.  When we strip away all the tactics, what remains—what will always remain—is people. 

Our people are our brands. 

In 2025 and beyond, we’re going to see higher education reinvest its brainpower in brand, in messaging that makes people feel something. I’m seeing a change. I’m seeing our institutions looking inward at their “why.” I hope that it sticks because much of our messaging over the past decade has been the verbal equivalent of leaving the stock image in a frame and calling it art.

We’ve buried our soul under buzzwords and fluff. It’s time to talk about ourselves like we matter. Because if we’re not putting soul into our messaging, we might as well not say anything at all.

Higher Ed Must Stand for Something

Shane Baglini

Higher education has been under attack for quite some time. From Dear Colleague letters mandating DEI rollbacks to halting research funding to removing protections from enforcement by federal immigration officials, the Trump administration has wasted no time moving forward with its systemic focus on higher education. The Department of Education recently eliminated more than 1,300 positions, and who knows what will follow?

I believe this series of actions, policies and changes will impact higher education more than anything else in 2025. I’m not sure that’s even debatable at this point. That said, how higher education reacts to each seemingly daily action will determine the extent of the damage done to our institutions and, most importantly, our students. Higher education is a mission-driven sector, and it’s time for institutions to stand by their missions.

Colleges and universities exist primarily to serve students, faculty, staff, alumni and the communities in which they operate. However, their ability to fulfill this mission is increasingly challenged. It’s time for higher education institutions to take a stand. We cannot allow our missions to be undermined so easily. We owe it to our students and communities to advocate for what is best for them, reclaim our voices, and change the narrative our skeptics seek to promote.

Courting the Adult Learner

Kevin Tyler

Whether you call it an enrollment cliff or a demographic one, it’s right around the corner, though some might argue it’s already here. More than 40 colleges have closed since 2020, and according to Fast Company, a total of 80 will have shuttered by 2029.

2025 will be the year higher education finally turns its attention to the 40 million or so adults (it’s important to note that Black, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American students are disproportionately represented in that number) who make up the “some college and no degree” audience as a way to fend off the decline in high school graduates and college-going prospects.

Not only will colleges and universities finally start prioritizing adult student recruitment, but we will also see a strengthening of the infrastructure necessary to support the unique needs of this audience. That support will come from inside the industry and from organizations that partner with higher education to improve completion and outcomes. The Coalition of Urban Serving Universities’ partnership with The Lumina Foundation’s PALS program and an initiative between the Tennessee Higher Education Commission and Ithaka S+R to support adult learners and boost degree completion are just two examples of how a network of champions is stepping up to support adult students.

Success won’t happen to us as an industry. We have to position ourselves to receive it. Focusing on helping those who started their education but haven’t finished could be our most significant first step.

The Role of Pluralism

Lindsay Nyquist

In 2025, higher education will be deeply influenced by the need to foster pluralism. At Occidental College, it’s part of our mission: to provide a gifted and diverse group of students with a total educational experience of the highest quality, one that prepares them for leadership in an increasingly complex, interdependent and pluralistic world. So, we discuss it a lot. 

As our country becomes increasingly polarized, all higher education leaders and educators must push students and employees to have challenging conversations, find common ground, and not see all issues as binary. There’s also a clear intersection between pluralism and freedom of expression, another highly debated topic on campuses. 

Although pluralism is an admirable goal, it’s often difficult to execute. 

Fortunately, there are frameworks to help actualize an abstract concept. I’ve learned about two recently: restorative practices and vigorous civility. Structures such as these create tactical ground rules for conversation (e.g., no interrupting) and more abstract challenges to being in a certain headspace (e.g., prepare to sit in emotional discomfort). They require a certain level of understanding of the speaker’s intent and identifying commonalities between seemingly disparate opinions. Ideally, participants can practice these guidelines in facilitated conversations and then take them into the classroom, the quad and the residence hall to make a real impact.

Will it be comfortable or easy? No. But growth never is.

Social Media Nano Influencers

Kellen Manning

I can’t shake the feeling that the future of social media is going in one of two directions: the rise of nano-influencers and the rise of generative AI. I’m not sure which one of these two paths wins, but if there is a definitive winner, it will speak volumes about the direction of higher education marketing. 

Universities fully utilizing nano-influencers to tell their story is important. Full stop! 

There’s power in activating your community and shining a spotlight on how individual experiences make up the overall college experience. As more people question higher education, utilizing a bottom-up approach, in which the community establishes your mission through their channels organically, can build trust. 

The only problem is that the bandwidth and resources needed to cultivate and monitor an activated community can be daunting. Is there another way?

Did you see how rapidly those Ghibli-inspired AI images took over the internet? Have you seen the rapid improvement of text-to-video content over the last few years? As budgets and teams get smaller, utilizing AI to tell your story in fun, unique and, most importantly, cheap ways feels like a huge benefit. If you take the time to learn the tools while keeping up with trends, your ability to make engaging content that gains attention increases exponentially! 

But, all attention isn’t good attention. AI is being compared to theft (see the response to the Ghibli stuff), and people are asking why humans couldn’t be hired to create the content.

Will one of these win out completely, or will we find a middle ground? I guess we’ll find out together.