Campus leaders are adapting to skepticism over higher education’s value by better communicating impact, a historically tricky quality to convey.
“There’s a growing demand from taxpayers and policymakers for universities to prove their worth,” says Euan Adie, CEO of Overton, a research and policy database. “Academia has been quite slow to respond, partly because it’s such a difficult question to answer or quantify.”
Harvard University, embroiled in a fierce legal battle over its federal funding with the Trump administration, has overhauled its homepage in recent months to focus on the impact of recent research, Adie noted.
Advancement teams across the country are using a similar strategy as they gear up for new fundraising initiatives that help compensate for decreased federal funding, says Jenny Jones, principal of advancement at EAB, a higher education research firm.
“We don’t want to be political, but we need to be transparent that those cuts are happening,” Jones says. “You don’t want to offend your constituents, but you still need to show the value in a higher education degree and why people should support those institutions.”
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University leaders seeking support from donors must present the impact of certain programming tactfully.
The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, which has the most Pell Grant recipients in the state system, must carefully communicate how affordability and diversity initiatives contribute to the state’s success, says Jones.
Those conversations must take place in the backdrop of increased state and federal efforts to end DEI initiatives.
“It’s about going back to your mission,” while avoiding “DEI terms,” says Jones. A diverse student body exposes students to more viewpoints, which “makes critical thinking even more important.”
Adie and his company, Overton, are measuring impact by tracking when a university’s research is included in state and federal policy documents. About three-quarters of state policy documents cite a local university more than any other individual university, Adie says.
“[Higher ed leaders] want to be able to point to figures and case studies that show they’re helping locally and nationally. The value is there.”
