If 2025 proved anything, it is that education PR is not just judged by how well institutions promote themselves in calm moments, but by how they communicate when certainty disappears.
From the acceleration of generative AI to campus protests tied to global conflicts, the past year placed universities, business schools and education providers under public scrutiny. In many cases, reputations were shaped not just by long-term strategy, but by how institutions also explained decisions, values and uncertainty in real time.
Here are the key lessons education PR professionals can take from some of the most defining moments of 2025.
By early 2025, generative AI had moved from novelty to infrastructure. Universities across the UK, US and Europe rewrote assessment policies after blanket AI bans proved unworkable. High-profile institutions including Imperial College London and several Russell Group universities publicly acknowledged that AI tools would be permitted in some forms of coursework, provided use was disclosed.
The PR lesson was clear: overconfident messaging could backfire. Early statements that framed AI as either a total threat or a seamless solution were quickly overtaken by reality. Institutions that best retained credibility were those that explained how policies were evolving and why trade-offs were being made.
In 2025, audiences did not expect certainty about AI. They expected honesty about complexity and institutions that admitted they were still learning were trusted more than those claiming to have already “solved” the issue.
Campus protests linked to the war in Gaza continued into 2025, with major demonstrations across universities in the UK, US and Europe. Institutions faced intense scrutiny over how they balanced freedom of expression, student safety and political pressure.
The PR failures were often similar. Statements that relied solely on legal language “we are monitoring the situation” or “we are complying with guidance” were widely criticised for lacking moral clarity. In contrast, institutions that anchored responses in clearly articulated principles, such as commitments to lawful protest, academic freedom and student welfare, were better able to withstand criticism even when decisions were contested.
The lesson for education PR was sometimes uncomfortable but unavoidable: refusing to articulate values can itself be seen as a values position, and rarely the one audiences want to hear.
One of the clearest patterns of 2025 was the media traction gained by individual academics. Scholars speaking plainly about AI ethics, geopolitical instability or higher education reform frequently gained media attention.
This was visible across many BlueSky clients, where leading academics and Deans were regularly featured in opinion pieces, interviews and expert commentary, speaking in their own voice rather than just through branded institutional messaging. In these cases, credibility flowed from their great expertise.
Media audiences responded readily to academics who explained complex issues clearly and candidly, even when their insights exposed uncertainty or disagreement within the sector.
For education PR teams, the lesson is clear: empowering trusted academic voices proves often more effective than relying solely on centrally issued statements.
Boeing’s prolonged safety and governance crisis in 2025, shaped by manufacturing failures, whistleblower allegations and sustained regulatory scrutiny, became one of the most high-profile corporate reputational stories of the year. Crucially, criticism focused not only on individual incidents, but on deeper questions about leadership culture, oversight and whether earlier warning signs had been taken seriously.
For education PR, the lesson is stark. In moments of sudden controversy, institutions are not judged solely on the clarity of their immediate response, but on the trust they have built over time. Universities facing protests, policy failures or safeguarding issues often discover that audiences interpret their statements through a pre-existing narrative about transparency and governance. Boeing’s experience underlined that crisis communication does not start when a statement is drafted, but years earlier, through consistent values-led messaging and credible leadership. In education, as in industry, reputation is shaped long before it is tested.
Finally, 2025 underlined how fragmented education audiences have become. Students, staff, alumni, regulators and media often interpreted the same issue through entirely different lenses.
Institutions that relied on a single public statement may therefore have struggled internally. Those that paired external media responses with robust internal communication were better able to maintain trust.
UCL, for example, paired public statements about campus safety and support against harassment with clear internal reminders of available support services and procedures for reporting incidents, an approach that acknowledged both public perception and the lived experience of staff and students.
Education PR in 2025 required segmentation without contradiction: different tones, same principles.
Taken together, the biggest education PR lessons of 2025 point in one direction. This was not a year characterised by slogans or campaigns. It was a year when institutions were judged on clarity, consistency and credibility under pressure.
As education faces continued disruption from AI to geopolitics, PR’s role includes interpretation as well as promotion. The institutions that succeed will be those that communicate not just what they are doing, but what they stand for, especially when the answers are not simple.
For support with your PR in 2026, get in touch today.
Adam understands how to tap into current news and ensure his clients’ voices are heard. He secures strategic media visibility for renowned institutions from around the world, including Trinity Business School, Hult International Business School, and more. Adam understands the value of higher education first-hand, having achieved his undergraduate degree in Law and Politics at Cardiff University, a respected Russell Group institution, Adam built on his academic success with a Masters in International Journalism, at Cardiff’s School of Journalism, Media and Culture.