The 25 Higher Education Podcasts Every Marketer Should Know

Confessions of a Higher Ed CMO
Jaime Hunt, who runs the consultancy Solve Higher Ed Marketing, hosts this Enrollify show as a series of candid conversations with the people in charge of marketing at major colleges and universities. Each episode gets into the lesser-known parts of the job, such as what it takes to counsel a nervous president through a tough decision and how changes to your operational model can address capacity issues that project management software alone can’t. If you want to hear experienced CMOs talk shop, this is a good place to start.

The Higher Ed Marketer
Run by Bart Caylor of Caylor Solutions, this podcast has over 250 episodes (and counting), which tells you something about how useful marketers find it. In each episode, Caylor offers practical advice you can take back to your team, with recent conversations covering topics such as the intersection of faith and higher education, aligning marketing with enrollment, and rebuilding a clunky university website. It’s an easy weekly listen when you want ideas you can put to work right away.

Higher Ed Storytelling University
The premise behind John Azoni’s show is blunt: Higher ed runs on stories, and most institutions tell them badly. Azoni, who founded the video shop Unveild, alternates between interviews with campus marketers and solo episodes that are more like mini-workshops, covering topics such as how to recruit grad students through content and how to get better video content out of the gear your in-house team already owns.

Talking Tactics
Another Enrollify show, “Talking Tactics,” is hosted by brand marketing consultant Safaniya Stevenson. Each episode breaks down one proven enrollment tactic, usually managed by a small team without a big budget. Conversations are grounded in what a lean shop can realistically achieve, which makes this a great listen for smaller teams with big goals, with practical takeaways you can immediately implement.

Higher Ed Demand Gen
Produced by Concept3D, the campus maps and virtual tour company, this show invites higher ed marketing leaders to talk through what’s working across the funnel, from admissions and demand generation to retention and alumni engagement. Recent episodes explore topics such as putting AI to work on a marketing team and making sense of federal digital accessibility rules.

The Application
Allison Turcio hosts this Enrollify podcast, to which she brings her perspective as dean of enrollment and marketing at Siena College. The show explores niche topics in enrollment marketing, with guests walking through strategies in detail, such as leveraging affordability as a positioning strategy and beating enrollment team burnout through authentic storytelling. It also features success stories from real institutions, including a recent episode on how Old Dominion increased Students Day attendance by 30% in just one year.

Higher Voltage
“Higher Voltage” is the flagship podcast from Volt, the higher ed marketing publication, and features interviews with marketers and leaders wrestling with higher ed’s more challenging strategic questions. Recent episodes have pushed marketers to help shape their institutions’ core offerings well beyond promotion, and explored what comes after traditional SEO once AI starts answering more of students’ search queries.

Trusted Voices
Another Volt podcast, this show is focused on how institutions are led rather than marketed. Each month, co-hosts Teresa Valerio Parrot and Erin Hennessey — both of whom are higher ed communications strategists — share their takes on the issues that are front of mind for university presidents, such as state interference with public universities and how to maintain an institution’s reputation when headlines turn hostile.

Higher Ed Conversations
Hosted by Cheryl Broom, CEO of the agency GradComm, “Higher Ed Conversations” runs on a monthly schedule, with shorter “Quick Take” episodes in between. While the show’s primary focus is marketing and communications, Broom also covers advancement and student success, with recent conversations on why clicks are a poor way to measure a campaign and what high school students actually notice when they’re comparing colleges.

Education Marketing Leader
Chris Rapozo’s “Education Marketing Leader” leans toward the business side of higher ed marketing, with emphasis on the vendor and agency partners institutions work with. Episodes cover topics such as how to evaluate an agency or martech vendor without getting burned; why narrow, niche content competes better in an AI-driven search world; and how college presidents can shape marketing by leading with authenticity. There’s a companion book club, too, if reading’s more your speed and you’re interested in connecting with other professionals in the field.

Keystone Higher Ed Chats
Most of the shows on this list focus on higher education in the U.S.; this podcast takes a global view. Host Scott Miller talks with university recruitment and marketing staff from around the world. Episodes are on the shorter side — typically under 30 minutes — which make them an easy listen during your coffee or lunch break. If international recruiting is a priority for you, this is a must-listen. Recent conversations include how a historically Black college approaches enrollment abroad and what Canada’s cap on international students has meant for enrollment there.

The EdUp Experience
“EdUp” is one of the most prolific shows in higher ed, with over 1,000 episodes dating back to 2020. Hosts Dr. Joe Sallustio and Elvin Freystes spend much of their time on what they call the “President Series”: sit-down interviews with college and university presidents about how they run their institutions, and where they think the field is headed. The catalog is broad enough that you’ll also find episodes on enrollment marketing and the student experience, so it’s easy to start with whatever makes the most sense for your role.

Future U
“Future U” is hosted by Jeff Selingo and Michael Horn, two well-known higher ed analysts. Selingo has spent years covering universities as a journalist, with bylines in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, and Horn writes widely on innovation in education. Together, the two take on topics such as how athletics departments have become “shadow universities,” rethinking funding models to better match institutions’ missions, and why colleges should redesign their offerings to better match the needs of the labor market.

Get Down to College Business
This show looks at the business side of running a college, with special attention to budgets and operating costs. Host Dr. Sarah Holtan, who founded the consulting firm High-LeveL Leadership, picks a specific money question for each episode and works through it with a guest, covering topics such as what an executive search costs or how colleges can keep their physical campuses affordable to run. The recurring theme is operations, and how an institution can spend less — including on higher ed marketing — without making the experience worse for students.

HEDx
The lone Australian entry on the list, “HEDx” is all about big-picture conversations with higher ed leaders about the state of the industry and where it’s headed next. The main feed rotates through Australian and global voices, usually with a co-host pulled from one of HEDx’s partner institutions, and recent episodes have focused on how universities should respond to AI and what the campus of the future might look like. There’s also a companion show, the “Student Experience Podcast,” which is hosted by Kelly Matthews of the University of Queensland and highlights student perspectives on the future of higher education.

Changing Higher Ed
In each episode of this podcast, host Dr. Drumm McNaughton, a higher ed consultant, brings on a college president or other senior leader to work through a major issue, from accreditation and governance to financial and policy pressures. Recent episodes have examined the strategic risk hiding inside research funding cuts and what other institutions can learn from the way the California State University system rolled ChatGPT out across all 22 campuses.

Office Hours with EAB
EAB is one of the largest research and consulting firms working with higher ed institutions today, and “Office Hours” is where its analysts talk shop with each other and with guests from campuses around the country. Their conversations cover every aspect of what it takes to run a university, through enrollment and marketing come up more often than anything else. Lately, the show has addressed how institutions can prepare for the end of the Grad PLUS loan program and how AI is changing the college search.

The Key
If you’re an Inside Higher Ed reader, this is their official podcast and covers much of the same news. Episodes tend to follow whatever’s making headlines, so you might hear from a college president one week and a policy expert the next. Recent stories include  the future of the Department of Education and what the publication’s own survey of presidents says about how they’re handling finances and the pressure to merge.

Higher Ed Pulse
Hosted by marketing consultant Mallory Willsea, “Higher Ed Pulse” is Enrollify’s weekly show all about AI in higher ed. Rather than broad thinkpieces, episodes zero in on a single development and what it means for higher ed marketers, so listeners with actionable insights (instead of a general sense of unease about AI). For example, recent episodes have featured marketers and campus leaders talking about how to develop AI governance policies for entire school systems and how universities can use AI avatars to provide personalized, one-on-one support to students.

The Wonkhe Show
Wonkhe is the go-to policy site for higher education in the United Kingdom, and its weekly show brings a panel of in-house experts (called “wonks”) together to discuss the policy developments of the week, with the occasional interview or guest feature mixed in. This is a valuable listen even for those working for American-based institutions, as many of the questions and concerns around funding, regulation, and appealing to prospective students even as they question the value of a degree will sound familiar, even when the particulars don’t.

Teaching in Higher Ed
While “Teaching in Higher Ed” is geared specifically toward educators, it’s still a great way for higher ed marketers to stay informed about what’s happening in their target industry. Hear firsthand perspectives from faculty about the craft of teaching, including course design, student engagement, and AI in the classroom. Host Bonni Stachowiak’s interviews offer marketers direct insight into the experience they spend their days selling.

EDUCAUSE & The Integrative CIO
Made for campus technology leaders by campus technology leaders, this podcast features interviews with chief information officers and other IT personnel about the parts of the job that have little to do with the technology itself, such as success planning and empowering the next generation of leaders. For higher ed marketers, the draw is the crossover episodes, with recent ones focused on building trust around campus AI and what Title II accessibility rules under the Americans with Disabilities Act will mean for the people who run institutional websites.

The Enrollment Brief
“The Enrollment Brief” comes from Echo Delta, a higher ed marketing agency, and it’s hosted by the firm’s strategy lead, Jarrett Smith, alongside a couple of colleagues hashing out a topic together. Their conversations center on the daily realities of enrollment marketing (and they aren’t afraid to argue that the solution to certain problems isn’t always “more marketing”). Episodes from the past few months have covered topics such as the rise of the “vibe school,” AI search as an honest mirror of brand impressions, and the impact of campus and classroom experiences on enrollment.

AI for U
“AI for U” is the second AI-focused show in the Enrollify roster, and it runs on longer, interview-based episodes about how people are actually putting AI to work. Hosted by Brian Piper, each episode features a guest from a university or another agency talking about everything from what “vibe coding” really means and what it can do for universities to how designers and copywriters are making AI a part of their creative process.