How to produce video for higher education

Why higher education video programs need a continuous model

Higher education sits at a structural fork. The traditional model: one anchor brand film every 3 to 5 years, occasional program videos commissioned ad-hoc by deans, social content patched together by the comms office, student-life content produced inconsistently across student affairs. The continuous model: a 200 to 500 piece annual program across five surfaces, built around the academic calendar, owned by a central video lead but commissioned across enrollment, brand, academic affairs, advancement and student life.

The structural shift is matching content cadence to the enrollment funnel. Awareness video at the top. Inquiry video at applicant capture. Yield video at deposit decision. Retention video through onboarding and into success-story content. Layered with academic, advancement and student life content that builds the institution's broader voice. The colleges and universities running this continuous model see enrollment yield lifts of 2 to 5 percentage points compared with peers running the traditional ad-hoc model. At small private-college scale (1,500 to 3,000 enrolled annually), that lift represents seven figures of net tuition revenue per cohort. This post is a guide to building or evaluating that program.

The buying committee at small US private colleges

Across small US private college programs, the buying committee is remarkably consistent. Three roles drive the video decision.

VP Communications

Owns the brand voice and the institutional narrative. Often co-owns the enrollment marketing budget with the VP Enrollment. Holds the final word on tone, hero film direction and crisis communications protocols. The decision-maker on partner selection at the strategic level.

Director of Strategic Content

Owns the program calendar, the editorial planning, the production roadmap. Briefs partners, manages stakeholder reviews, handles distribution. The day-to-day decision-maker on production workflow and the partner the strategic content team relies on for capacity.

Writer / Editor

Owns the actual scripts, voice, story shape across video, written and social. Often the most-cited internal voice on whether a script holds up to the institution's editorial standards. The detail-level decision-maker on creative direction.

Programs that align stakeholder communication to these three roles ship cleanly. Programs that try to negotiate with each dean separately, or run video through a marketing committee with no editorial owner, slow to a crawl. The buying-committee pattern matters because video is the most central institutional content surface; the team that owns it has to be small, accountable and editorially sharp.

The five content surfaces

Surface 1: Brand and mission

Anchor films, anniversary and milestone moments, institutional identity story content. Lowest volume but highest production value because these pieces shape how the institution is perceived. Volume: 2 to 6 finished pieces per year. Cost: $25K to $80K per anchor film. Owner: brand team and President's office. Cycle: 12 to 24 weeks for a hero film.

Surface 2: Recruitment

Program explainers (one per major plus interdisciplinary clusters), virtual tour content, student voice video, faculty introductions, financial aid explainers, admitted-student welcome content, deposit-decision videos. The highest enrollment-impact surface. Volume: 30 to 100 finished pieces per year. Cost: $3K to $10K per piece. Owner: admissions and enrollment marketing.

Surface 3: Academic

Course introductions, lab and studio tours, research highlights, faculty perspective video, signature program content. Volume: 40 to 120 finished pieces per year (drops sharply at colleges that do not invest in academic video, which is most colleges). Cost: $2K to $6K per piece. Owner: provost's office and academic affairs.

Surface 4: Advancement

Donor stories, campaign video, scholarship impact content, annual report companion video, planned giving content. Volume: 10 to 30 finished pieces per year. Cost: $8K to $25K per piece (higher per-asset cost because donor-facing content carries higher production value). Owner: advancement.

Surface 5: Student life

Athletics, residence life, club and organisation content, event content, student-produced content with editorial oversight. The highest-volume surface for most colleges. Volume: 60 to 200 finished pieces per year. Cost: $1K to $4K per piece. Owner: comms and student affairs.

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The enrollment funnel and which video runs at each stage

Awareness

Brand films, mission story, social discovery content. The audience is high school students who have not yet decided which colleges to consider. Distribution: paid social, YouTube pre-roll, college search platforms. The role of video at this stage is to put the institution into consideration; conversion to inquiry is the metric.

Inquiry

Program explainers, virtual tour content, faculty introductions, location content for prospective students who have heard of the college and want to evaluate fit. Distribution: institution website, email follow-up to inquiries, campus visit pre-arrival video. The role of video at this stage is to deepen understanding of what the institution offers; conversion to application is the metric.

Application

How-to-apply walkthrough, financial aid explainer, scholarship overview, application-process video. Distribution: applicant portal, email nurture sequence, financial aid office content. The role of video at this stage is to remove friction from the application process; conversion to completed application is the metric.

Yield

Admitted-student welcome film, student-voice testimonials, faculty welcome video, residence and academic life content for admitted students who have not yet deposited. The single highest-leverage stage for video because yield decisions are emotional and video is the most emotional medium. Distribution: admitted-student portal, yield campaign emails, accepted-student events. Conversion to deposit is the metric.

Retention

Onboarding video, academic advising content, student-success stories, alumni narrative content for current students. Often underinvested because retention sits outside the enrollment-marketing budget. Distribution: student portal, advising channels, success-story library. Conversion to persistence and graduation is the metric.

The academic calendar pattern

Higher ed video runs against a hard external calendar that does not flex.

Fall semester production push

August through October: orientation content, fall semester academic content, student-life ramp-up, first-year experience video. The studio days that capture the most student voice happen in September and October because campus is full and students are engaged.

Open house and admission events

September through March: campus visit days, virtual open houses, admitted-student events. Video for these events is produced in the weeks before; cutdowns produced in real-time during the event for social distribution.

Yield season

March through May: the highest-stakes period because deposit decisions land. Yield content produced January through March; distribution heaviest in April. The video team's busiest period of the year.

Summer production planning

June through August: lower campus activity makes summer ideal for hero brand film production, faculty interview recording days, evergreen content. Plan the fall semester content roadmap during summer.

Commencement

May: commencement film production for the year's institutional narrative content. Highest emotional content of the year; usually the most-viewed alumni-facing content.

The batched-day production model that holds at scale

Faculty recording days

Quarterly faculty recording days produce 8 to 16 faculty interviews per session. Same studio setup, consistent question structure, cross-edited into program-specific videos. Per-asset cost drops 50 to 70 percent against ad-hoc faculty recording. Most colleges that scale faculty video successfully run this model.

Student voice recording days

Monthly student voice sessions produce 8 to 20 student interviews per day. Cross-cut into program-specific, life-on-campus and yield content. The student voice library is the asset that holds enrollment marketing programs together because admitted students respond to current student voices more than any other production element.

Walkabout days

Quarterly campus walkabout days produce environmental footage, classroom and lab footage, athletic and student life footage that feeds the library for the next 3 to 6 months of production. The library asset that prevents repeated location shooting.

Event production days

Production crews attached to major campus events (open houses, admitted-student days, commencement, signature speakers) for both event-day capture and downstream re-cut into evergreen content. The event becomes both an attendee experience and a content moment.

What changes for the production team working on higher ed content

Three practical shifts.

Shift 1: Editorial discipline

Writers and editors fluent in higher education's specific voice: aspirational without being grandiose, specific about programs without being dry, emotional without being saccharine. The producer who can brief a faculty member and get a usable take in 25 minutes is worth more than the producer who needs an hour. We covered the broader sector fluency model in how a partner gets up to speed on your industry.

Shift 2: Calendar discipline

The production team that ships well in higher ed locks the calendar to the academic year and accepts that yield-season delivery is non-negotiable. Production schedules built around the commercial calendar do not survive the higher-ed academic calendar's external constraints.

Shift 3: Stakeholder navigation

Producers fluent in navigating the cross-functional stakeholders in higher ed: deans, provost office, admissions, advancement, athletics, student affairs, brand, communications. Often more stakeholders per asset than in commercial production. The producer who can hold the project together across this many stakeholders is the differentiator.

Practical questions enterprise higher ed teams ask

What does a complete higher-ed video program cost?

For a small US private college producing 200 to 300 pieces across the five surfaces: $500K to $900K annually. For a mid-size institution producing 400 to 500 pieces: $900K to $1.6M. For a large institution at full coverage: $1.6M to $3M. Most colleges underspend at the recruitment and academic surfaces while overspending on one-off hero brand films.

How does video lift enrollment yield?

Cross-sector benchmarks suggest a 2 to 5 percentage point yield lift is achievable when video coverage moves from ad-hoc to continuous, particularly when admitted-student-stage video is well-produced and personalised by major. At a 22 percent baseline yield with 8,000 inquiries and 35 percent inquiry-to-application and 65 percent admit rate, a 3-point yield lift represents roughly $1.5M to $2M in incremental net tuition per cohort.

Should we use student-produced content?

Yes for student life and social-first surfaces; no for hero brand films and yield-stage content. Most successful programs maintain a student multimedia team for high-frequency social content with editorial oversight from the central video lead, alongside professional production for the higher-stakes content surfaces.

How do we handle FERPA and accessibility?

FERPA: student appearance in identifiable video requires documented consent; minors require parent/guardian consent; student-record references in interviews require explicit consent. Accessibility: WCAG 2.1 AA is the de facto standard for college websites; captions and transcripts on every published video. Most large institutions also produce audio-described tracks for hero content.

What about AI in higher ed video production?

Useful in narrow places (transcript editing, social cutdown selection, faculty content captioning); inappropriate as a replacement for student voice or faculty perspective. The trust signal in higher ed content is the authentic student and faculty voice; AI-generated voice or talent erodes that trust. We covered the broader AI framing in how AI fits inside enterprise video workflows.

Where to go next

For the customer story pattern that overlaps with student voice production, read how to produce customer story video at scale. For the broader accessibility framework that higher ed extends, read how to make enterprise video accessible. For the recruiting video pattern that overlaps with admissions video, read how heads of TA should use video for hiring.

To scope a higher education video program matched to the academic calendar and the enrollment funnel, book a free consultation.