TLDR: After being unable to land even an interview for any entry level higher ed admin positions, what are some other jobs I could apply for to gain relevant experience to make my resume more appealing to recruiters?

Hello all,

With the current job market, I have struggling immensely to break into higher education administration in Canada. I have essentially applied to every single job posting for every university and college in my city for the past two months and have not even recieved a single reply email, let alone an interview.

I have a bachelor of arts, diploma of teaching English as a second language, and years of experience in customer service and teaching adjacent roles such as interpretive guide, visitor services at a national park, and 911 dispatching.

I am now looking for other avenues I could take to try and land an entry level position at a university. Does anyone have any suggestions for other types of jobs I could apply for to try and gain some experience that is more directly applicable for higher ed admin? Maybe something like an administrative assistant at a company or a desk job at a highschool office? Im currently primarily interested in student advisor positions, but really anything would be okay with me. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Edit: I am currently employed working general maintenance at a national park.

Anyone know of good remote jobs that could help me break into higher ed? Currently work in k-12 ed and I’m trying to break into higher ed. There is a large university near me but I’ve had no luck getting an interview. Looking at remote options to see if I can gain experience and not really sure where to start. Any advice would be appreciated!

Hi everyone! I have worked at an R1 institution for over eight years in mostly student facing roles. I also have my masters in higher ed. I've been trying to pivot away from student services roles and want to get into operations, curriculum management, etc. I've been a finalist for the last ten roles I've interviewed for at my institution and can't quite make that final step. Is the market just that tough right now or should I think about switching out of traditional university setting?

Currently an elementary teacher trying to make the switch to higher ed. My long term goal is to get into academic advising but right now I’m just trying to get into higher ed so I can gain experience. Any tips for how to break in? Feels impossible right now.

My institution is looking to change our SIS and we're starting the process of reviewing and getting demos. We're a smaller institution (a little under 1k students) and Ellucian products are a bit too much for our budget. Jenzabar may be as well, but we're going to give it a look. What SIS does your institution use and how do you think it is perceived? Any perspective is welcomed. Thanks!

Boston is the epicenter of US higher education. The Boston Globe had been previously kind of...ignoring the higher ed sector. But now it's in freefall, so they finally have to do something. So they started a...newsletter?

"Higher education is in trouble. Universities are being hammered by funding cuts, enrollment losses, and declines in public trust. Exorbitant tuition prices and AI are prompting existential questions about the purpose of attending college. Schools are under unprecedented pressure to reinvent themselves. This August, Globe Opinion launched College Town, a weekly email newsletter packed with insights about higher ed from Globe journalist Hilary Burns. College Town also will connect you to provocative ideas from professors, students, and other writers who will illuminate the huge changes roiling campuses."
You can sign up at: https://www.bostonglobe.com/newsletters/college-town/
I thought it may be of interest to the community.

Boston higher ed has drama right now -- MIT and Harvard are doing weird stuff lately (10% of FAS got laid off a few months ago). Northeastern is buying up schools across the US (and is rapidly rising, has unique co-op model, tuition is very high). BC/BU/Tufts aren't doing as well as they should be financially. Emerson...still there, doing cool stuff! With the closing of Cal-Arts MCAD is the last remaining public arts college. There's a ton more in the region: Brandeis, Suffolk, UMass, Lesley, Hult, etc etc) - my prediction is as ever, The Globe will just go to fancy dinners and repost/re-gurgitate PR announcements, but the newsletter is free and may be of interest.

But hey -we can use our free will and the sub for resource sharing.

If you follow any Higher Ed substacks, Newsletters, or roundups, we can use this thread to share resources. Drop the link below, and tell us a little about what the publication covers/does.

Thank you for letting me into this group. Finding a career back in higher education has been difficult. My concern is I’m not getting hired even though I have worker in a nonprofit focused on Latino college success, and a major university in North East area. I spent 6 years in that career but ever since I left including another job in nonprofit, construction company interpreting for Spanish, and now a large paint and coatings company, has been difficult to go back to higher education. I have worked with international communities and underrepresented students my whole career and even now working with Spanish speaking paint contractors. My goal is eventually international education so not sure what advice or tips to make it easier to go back to higher education. I have been filling gaps with my experiences in nonprofit with volunteership including American Council on World Affairs and local clean up events in 2024 and 2025. Is there anything else I can do to continue getting involved.

Interesting article about the diverging fortunes of Syracuse and Northeastern

I’ve been in and around higher education for a long time and for some reason, I did not know this

This is extra worrisome given the new push towards putting people into private student loans

After working in management for 15ish years (mostly distribution center and warehouse management) I began a job working in facilities for a midsize college. The way universities move around money and handle budgets is just wild to me.

There is just so much gray area and opportunity for abuse. Senior leadership on our facilities teams had issues with college credit card abuse, and after turnover in that role we have another leader who is very 'loose' with funds, and constantly short on money for their department.

I guess I'm just wondering how common this is for colleges/universities? I know it happens in the private sector too, but at least in my experience it was more difficult to pull off, and accountability was higher.

Edit - typo.

On Aug. 26, a Semafor investigation using Pangram to determine whether recent guest columns in major newspapers were written using artificial intelligence identified a column by Schnell as “100% AI-written.” Schnell’s column in The Washington Post — titled “Universities are fighting AI cheating. But there’s a deeper problem.” — argued that “a degree should distinguish what students can do independently from what they can accomplish with AI.”

I’ve had recent conversations with colleagues about AI-native universities.

These institutions are designed around AI from inception, with the technology embedded in instruction, administration, and the underlying technology stack.

A new AI-native university, the London School of Innovation, received accreditation in the UK. It offers a significantly lower tuition level than its peers. This may be the first of many.

I’d like feedback from higher education stakeholders, including leadership and faculty, on how they’re thinking about this model.

People are rightfully concerned about AI and automation. To be clear,  I’m not advocating for the rise of these institutions. But if these institutions take off, they could affect all of higher education by driving down costs and, correspondingly, tuition. 

AI agents can automate repetitive administrative work found in a university’s functional areas like recruitment, finance, student support, etc… I’m not talking about a completely virtual school without humans. Humans do higher-value work. 

Instruction becomes more personalized. This is highly controversial among academic circles. Faculty have critiqued software-enabled personalized learning, arguing that it leads to deskilling. 

But… if AI-native institutions increase productivity and lower costs, they can charge substantially lower tuition than traditional institutions. Which benefits students.

Are leadership teams and faculty discussing AI-native institutions? If so, what are they saying?

New student loan forbearance rules coming next year: for new loans issued after July 1, 2027, borrowers will be limited to only 9 months of forbearance per 24 month period. And there will be no more unemployment deferment or economic hardship deferment.

This is pretty obvious corruption

I’ve been looking at what the publicly traded postsecondary companies said on their most recent earnings calls, and there seems to be a recurring theme around student acquisition and its evolution given the adoption of LLMs by prospective students.

The management teams are saying that prospective students are going through longer and more iterative evaluation processes. Folks are having conversations with their LLMs, who are providing a wealth of information and are offering alternatives. This has caused web leads to go down and acquisition costs to go up.

Given that these are for-profit institutions, I have no sense if what they are seeing is reflective of their sector or if this is something that all higher ed institutions are seeing.

What are you seeing at your institutions?

What are your thoughts on what's happening regarding prospective student use of LLMs and how it's altering the student journey?

Hello, I'm invited to a prerecorded interview at a private university for an accounting assistant position. Honestly, I'm surprised I have an interview with them. I have an accounting degree with no related experience and 5 years of retail experience. Any interview tips?

Hey y'all! I am here once again. After a traumatizing work experience (I was hired and the day I was going to sign the offer they rescinded it) I went again into the job market (yes I am aware of its challenging season) and I applied to an ivy league. Surprisingly, they contacted me and I made it to the seconnd interview. That was on Aug 13. It is the 25th and I have not heard from them. The third and final round it is supposed to be in person. I am incredibly anxious especially because I dont know if there is a possibility of them ghosting me? and also because workday portal says "Interview Pending". I dont know.....should I just give up on it? The reason I ask is because the timeline is the following
July 21 I received the first call to have my first screening on July 29. Aug 3 I got the second call for Aug 13.
Any leads?

I work in a college that has been dealing with fraudulent applicants for a few years. We found a huge wave of them once we started some outreach efforts that were unrelated to searching for these and then we had to shut down hundreds of accounts at once during peak.

For those who don't know, there are bad actors out there that are trying to get student accounts to try to get financial aid funds or get access to student email accounts. Institutions that are open enrollment have the tendency of getting hit the hardest which the institution I work for is. I'd say our institution has been ahead of the curve when it comes to reviewing fraudulent applicants and stopping them from becoming ghost students, and with the financial aid policies that just updated, it appears that the scammers are changing their tactics.

We use a fraud detection 3rd party tool and I found that some fraudulent applicants were getting past the ID check, however, it was the actual people who were submitting the ID's making it look legitimate. And it also appears that these people are also doing the ID Statement forms for financial aid and having the actual person mail them. Where I found out that it was still fraudulent is when I found out a few had been calling about enrolling and it did not match the information we had. When checking with our 3rd party service, I learned that the IP address for the app submission and the ID submission were dramatically different.

I have so many questions, but the fact it's more than a couple people that have managed to do this is terrifying...

Hi! I’m started working as a Residence Life Coordinator for a college about 6 months ago. I love my supervisors, but it honestly is nothing like when I was an RA for the school. It’s basically a 9-5, super low interaction office job when you boil it down.

TLDR: What higher ed jobs do you find to be more interactive or fulfilling? Or is low interaction becoming a trend now?

For reference, I’m in my early 20s, have a B.A. in Psychology, and an M.S. in Higher Ed College Administrative Leadership. This is my first ever full-time job, so I’m worried that because I’m still really young that I won’t be considered for more interactive positions elsewhere even though I have my masters already. It’s also why I’m turning to Reddit since I don’t have much knowledge on different higher ed jobs I can do with my degree that aren’t financial aid. I’m open to working in admissions, but don’t have familiarity on what that would look like.

Any advice is appreciated!