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Background
I started in higher education as an admissions counselor — reading files, calling admitted students, running campus tours, learning the rhythms of the application cycle from the ground up. Over time I moved into administration and eventually became Director of Undergraduate Admissions at a mid-sized regional university. That meant I was the person making enrollment strategy decisions, sitting in the rooms where yield tactics get planned, and watching how institutional priorities shape the information that reaches students and families.
What I noticed over those 12 years is that the admissions process is systematically poorly explained — not always deliberately, but the effect is the same. Families make enormous financial decisions based on sticker prices that bear little relationship to what they’ll actually pay. They treat rankings as objective measures of quality without knowing what those rankings actually count. They take yield-protection rejections personally. They don’t know what a Common Data Set is, or that they’re allowed to read one. The information asymmetry between institutions and families is real and consequential.
I’m not cynical about higher education. I worked in it for over a decade because I think it matters. But I left that role because I thought the most useful thing I could do was write about it honestly — from the perspective of someone who understands how universities make decisions, not from the perspective of someone paid to help universities recruit students.
What I Cover on Higher Ed News Hub
Everything on this site is written for students and families, not for institutions. I cover admissions processes with the institutional context that official messaging leaves out, college rankings with a clear explanation of what their methodology does and doesn’t measure, and financial aid with specific attention to the gap between sticker price and net price — which is large, poorly understood, and rarely explained clearly by the schools themselves. I also follow the broader higher education landscape: enrollment pressures, institutional closures, the real role of online and community college options. When I cite statistics, I name the source — Common Data Sets, IPEDS, Department of Education data — and I explain the methodology when it matters.
What I won’t do: promote specific schools without balanced context, treat U.S. News rankings as authoritative without explaining their construction and limitations, or write anything that serves institutional marketing over student interests. If a policy varies significantly between an R1 research university, a liberal arts college, and a community college, I’ll say so. If the debt numbers are uncomfortable, I’ll publish them anyway.
Credentials & Experience
- Director of Undergraduate Admissions, mid-sized regional university
- Admissions Counselor, higher education administration
- 12 years total in higher education administration
- Founder and Author, Higher Education News Hub
Get in Touch
If you have a question about the admissions process, a data point you’d like me to look into, or a correction on something I’ve written, I’d like to hear from you. Accurate information is the point of this site, and I take that seriously.
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