Key points:
- Most Americans still trust colleges and universities to do what is right, but that trust is thin–and easy to lose
- America is turning against higher education. Students are still signing up.
- Higher ed faces mounting challenges amid evolving expectations
- For more news on building community trust, visit eCN’s Campus Leadership hub
If you work in higher education, you already know about the audience problem.
Donors. Alumni. Prospective students. Current students. Faculty, staff, elected officials, local employers, community members, journalists, and more. Every one of them needs something different, and you’re trying to reach all of them at once, often with limited time and budget. And all of this inside a media environment that can feel designed to keep you on the back foot.
Here’s what the research says: The answer isn’t a better defense. It’s a better offense. And the tools to run it are probably closer than you think.
The gap is a story gap
New national research outlined in Trust in Higher Education Starts Local finds that 74 percent of Americans still trust colleges and universities to do what is right, but that trust is thin–and easy to lose. There’s a large, ambivalent majority of people who don’t see schools consistently delivering on the promise to make people’s lives better and our society stronger. Without clear, visible proof, confidence can quickly turn into doubt.
The antidote is visible evidence of local college impact, and most institutions already have it. Here are a few:
Wake Forest University engineering seniors designed and built a mobile solar-powered trailer, deployed to fire stations across Winston-Salem. During power outages, the trailer brings electricity to residents who depend on medical devices like oxygen machines.
Denison University equips incoming students with the skills to talk and debate across differences. Students build a culture of dialogue from day one on campus that follows them into their community and workplaces when they graduate.
Northeastern University’s AI for Impact initiative has produced more than two dozen tools to address specific civic challenges in areas like procurement, grant applications, and public communication.
These colleges are bridging the very real town/gown divide: campuses that can feel separate from the communities around them, even when they’re on the same block.
Local college impact, made visible, builds the kind of community investment that makes criticism less likely to land. Said another way: Offense is the best defense.
Look past the campus walls
The Local Proof Storytelling Playbook, developed alongside the research, starts from a simple premise: Your college is not separate from the community around it.
The Playbook organizes what people actually want to see from colleges into three categories, each of which is a storytelling opportunity:
People want to see students becoming informed citizens, not just employable ones. Critical thinking skills. Productive conversations across difference. Students engaging with real community challenges, not just coursework. A journalism school symposium on fact-checking. A civil discourse program that’s open to the public. These are local college impact stories that matter to every audience on that list.
People want to see colleges showing up as community hubs. Neighbors coming to campus to vote, to access services, to learn alongside students. Accounting students offering free tax prep to local residents. A community pantry run by student volunteers. Internship pipelines built with local small businesses. These programs exist at many schools across the country, but the local community isn’t hearing about them.
People want to see colleges listening and changing. This is the hardest one, and the most important. Transparent town halls. Honest information about the real cost of attendance. Programs built around what communities actually need. When people see that a college responds, trust follows. When they don’t see it, they assume it isn’t happening.
The story structure that works
The Playbook’s four-step framework is worth keeping close:
- Choose a concrete project that will grab people’s attention
- Identify a main character your audience trusts and relates to
- Show the action, connect it to what your school stands for
- Show how the impact reaches beyond the individual student into the community
That structure works across every audience because it doesn’t ask anyone to trust an abstract idea about higher education. Instead, it produces stories that show something that happened to a real person in a real place. That’s what local college impact looks like when it’s made visible, and it’s the kind of story that moves donors, alumni, parents, and elected officials–and builds community goodwill.
The good news is that you don’t need a new campaign or new resources. Look at what’s already happening and make it visible. Put a real person at the center, name the place, show the outcome.
That’s how the gap closes, and how the best defense gets built. Not by arguing back, but by making it impossible to ignore what you’ve already done.
Jay Geneske is Chief Communications Officer at C&S, where he leads the higher education narrative strategy initiative. He has advised organizations across education, the arts, philanthropy, and the corporate and civic sectors on closing the gap between what institutions do and what the public sees.