Before the Alarm Sounds: 4 Crisis Communication Essentials for Higher Ed Marketers
It’s 5:30 p.m., and you’re finally closing the laptop after a long day as a campus communicator. You hear the familiar ping of a Teams chat: a colleague tells you an angry parent has posted on TikTok, and it’s getting some attention. You decide to let it run its course. These things happen all the time, right? But by the next day, that TikTok has gone viral, and network news stations are calling you for comment. What happened?
When campus communicators think about crisis communication, they often think of the most obvious crises: a natural disaster, a campus shooting, or a scandal involving an employee. But in our social media-focused world, even a single post or video can create a much bigger crisis. It doesn’t take long for that one angry parent’s TikTok to spawn thousands of comments and reactions.
An institution in crisis is losing trust by the minute. Any trust your institution has built up over the years can be rapidly depleted by a poorly handled crisis. The good news is that a crisis handled well can build trust and brand loyalty in a powerful way. People don’t just remember what happened; they remember how the institution handled it.
In consumer behavior and customer relationship management, a concept called the service recovery paradox serves as an illustration for crisis communication in higher education. This paradox is grounded in the idea that successfully addressing and rectifying a customer’s complaint can lead to an even more loyal customer in the end. We are, as it turns out, most loyal to the brands we know we can trust because we’ve seen what they do when something goes wrong.
In higher education, things go wrong all the time. A tornado destroys campus facilities, the admission office sends out 10,000 emails with a massive typo, or a violent crime happens on or near your campus. These are wildly different scenarios, but in each case, imagine the trust that can be solidified by a strong crisis communication strategy – among all of our stakeholders, not just students. As a parent, I’d feel even better about where I’m sending my tuition dollars if I can see how quickly an institution reacts in order to keep my student safe and let me know what’s going on. As an employee, I’m more likely to stick around for an institution that keeps me in the loop and lets me know what they’ll do better next time.
So, what do campus communicators need to know before the crisis happens?
Plan Ahead
The worst time to create a crisis plan is when the crisis is already happening. Many institutions share their full crisis communication plans online, which makes it easy to learn from others’ experiences. If your institution’s plan is outdated or nonexistent, you can get started on a new one today.
Create a section of your plan specific to crises you’re likely to experience, such as a natural disaster or utility outage. Create plans for the crises you hope you never experience, too – like an active shooter or the death of a student or employee.
For campus communicators, issues management should also be a daily activity. Ask yourself: what’s happening at other colleges and universities, and what would it take for that to happen here? If it does, what would our messaging be? Who would communicate it, how, and to whom?
Once you’ve experienced a particular type of crisis, you’ll find that your expertise shifts, as well. When the COVID-19 pandemic happened, the institution where I worked had a section in the plan for “flu or pandemic illness.” Was that one-page plan adequate for something as ground-shifting as the COVID-19 pandemic turned out to be for higher education? Definitely not. But it was a place to start, and that team would know what to do in a future, similar situation.
In a 2024 interview with Inside Higher Ed, crisis management expert Andrew Jarrell said, “Of course, by the nature of a crisis, it is unique and evolving, and so you’re going to have to respond. But having something in place as a jumping-off point is really, really critical.”
In most cases, your stakeholders will never see your careful planning. What they will see is an organization that isn’t flailing in the face of a crisis – one that knows who’s in charge, who needs to hear their message, and how best to communicate with that audience. That’s the kind of institution that is keeping its brand promises.
Act Quickly
In our social media-driven culture, you don’t have days or even hours to respond to a crisis; you have minutes. I always find it interesting, when a big news story breaks, to see which news alerts pop up first on my phone. Some news organizations are rushing to break the story; others are more cautious. Many times, such stories are labeled with a disclaimer of sorts, e.g., “This is breaking news. Details may be subject to change.”
What can campus communicators learn from our colleagues on the journalism side? Get there first. If something is happening on your campus, your audiences need to hear from you quickly. I’m not just talking about sending a campus text alert if a crime is in progress – though, obviously, you need to do that. I’m also talking about carefully worded social media posts and follow-up messages from university leadership. Those messages need to be timely, too.
Because communication is so easy now, thanks to technology, silence can seem like incompetence. Even if all you can say is the situational equivalent of “this is a breaking news story,” say that. An organization that is silent for too long in the face of a crisis is violating the trust its stakeholders have placed in its brand.
Be Transparent
In a crisis, it can be challenging to gather accurate facts. We’ve seen this play out recently as the public has demanded to know more about what Cornell University did or did not do in the wake of sexual assault allegations against seven students. It’s vital that campus leaders work together to collect accurate information and release it as soon as advisable.
Leaders are sometimes tempted to focus only on the cold, hard facts. If a campus crisis involves a tragedy, such as a death, it’s critically important for the institution to express emotion, as well.
In August 2026, two Milligan University students were killed and several others were injured when the university’s cycling team was struck by a vehicle. Milligan’s communications team released statements and posted on social media regarding the facts, of course. But the communication that had the largest impact was an emotional video of Dr. Stephen Waers, university president, talking about the tragedy. The video was featured on national news outlets the following day. Small colleges’ brand promises often include a feeling of family or community on campus, and Waers’ video demonstrated that community in real time.
Scott Cowen, who led Tulane University through the impact of Hurricane Katrina and led Case Western Reserve University through the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, wrote in Inside Higher Ed in 2022, “Being emotionally transparent is still not considered best practice in management and leadership circles yet. But both are indispensable to the practice of crisis leadership.”
Know Your Audiences
A few years ago, I was hired to help a nonprofit client manage a crisis situation that was spiraling badly. There was a clear gap between the public’s perception of the situation and the organization’s. I gently pointed out that they hadn’t been transparent enough with their donors and clients, and the response was, “But we sent an email blast!”
Clearly, sending a single email isn’t enough anymore. As campus communicators, we have to know who our audiences are, yes, but also where they are. If I want to reach Baby Boomers, then an email and a Facebook post may be my best bet. But I won’t reach many current students with either of those. (Ask any professor how often today’s college students actually read their email!)
Technology has also ensured that most communication is now two-way. If I have a bad experience on a Delta flight, I can probably make more headway by tagging them in a social media post than I can by calling a customer service number. Likewise, that angry parent is going to post on TikTok instead of calling your Admission Office.
As a moment of crisis ebbs and flows, campus communicators must not just communicate to their audiences; they must communicate with them. That means doing social listening, not just posting. It also means engaging with commenters as needed – and having a strong policy for who does that, when, and how.
Takeaway
We are living in a time when public trust in higher education is eroding. Students and their families aren’t sure if they’re getting what they’re paying for. As campus communicators, we do our best to assure them that we’ll deliver on our brand promises. A crisis has the potential to quickly undermine those promises.
By creating a crisis plan, acting quickly in a moment of crisis, being as transparent as we can, and knowing our audiences, campus communicators can help our institutions continue to deliver on their promises for decades to come.
Are you looking for a higher education partner that can work with you to clarify, create, and communicate the messages that matter most? Let's talk about how 5° could help you grow a brand families trust.
