The Higher Education Trust Crisis Is an Alumni Engagement Crisis

Colleen Flaherty's 2026 Inside Higher Ed survey on presidential trust-building made my stance on alumni engagement as top-of-funnel infrastructure quite urgent. 51% of college presidents have launched initiatives to rebuild public trust. More than half are defaulting to public relations and messaging.

The experts I found most resonant say it won't work. Why? Trust requires vulnerability. Trust transfers through intermediaries, not institutions. Trust is built through lived experience, not campaigns.Every relational prescription in that article describes alumni engagement work done well. And presidents looking for trust infrastructure don't see us — because too many of us have accepted being framed as activity coordinators.

In this piece, I argue:

→ Why the PR reflex is not a strategy
→ What alumni engagement holds that few can replicate
→ What claiming our seat at the table actually requires
→ What happens to the leaders and institutions that don't

Every relational prescription in Inside Higher Ed's reflections on the 2026 trust survey describes alumni engagement work done well. I’m concerned the field has not yet noticed. Some peers in alumni relations (and advancement more broadly) still aren't seeing themselves as builders and protectors of trust infrastructure. We have allowed our function to be defined by its outputs rather than its purpose, and that's a problem. I encourage my colleagues-in-arms to take this as a call to action, and I encourage executives to partner with us to construct what is missing.

Of the 51% of presidents launching trust initiatives, more than half are defaulting to public relations and messaging strategies, with public institutions leading the privates in this effort. What should be noted is that trust begins to erode when the public perceives a delta between the institutional narrative and the lived experience. Hurling more messaging into that gap widens it, and I think we can do better than yelling into the void.

I haven't spoken at length (yet) on my experience as a CASE Circle of Excellence Award volunteer judge, but the experience has shaped how I read institutional storytelling. I read submissions filled with canned data points and brochure-like statements attributed to leaders. None of that moved me. The pieces that stuck out were fully fleshed-out tales depicting an unawakened or isolated original state, the depth of the encounter and formation at the institution, and how that experience expanded life afterward. Those stories worked because they came from people who lived them. Alumni engagement is a function where that gap between institutional narrative and lived experience expands or contracts. It is where the institution stops broadcasting and starts being vouched for.

A few experts in the article articulated this with particular nuance. Richard Roman argues that trust requires vulnerability and demands relationships over campaigns. The public, he writes, is asking whether we are on their side. Liz Gross, Ph.D. draws on the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer to make a related point: in low-trust environments, trust transfers through intermediaries, not institutions. Both descriptions name the conditions under which alumni engagement, properly understood, is one of the most credible functions in an institution.

So why don't presidents looking for trust infrastructure see us? Because too many of us have accepted being framed as event planners and pipeline feeders. We accept it from VPs of advancement who measure us on prospect identification and conversion. We accept it from presidents who evaluate us on attendance numbers and chapter counts. We accept it from job descriptions that describe us as program managers. And we accept it from ourselves when we describe the work as events instead of infrastructure.

Viewing alumni engagement as an activity function is like expecting sales numbers from marketing. Marketing's role is influence, building the conditions under which a sale becomes possible. Alumni engagement's role is the same: building the conditions under which advocacy, service, and philanthropy become possible. As I argued in my first article on this platform, alumni engagement is essential top-of-funnel work. Our work develops sophisticated, upstream, early-stage relationship infrastructure. The IHE survey proves it and calls for it.

If we do not claim this work, something will always be missing. I deeply respect our colleagues in communications, PR, branding, and reputation management. However, we hold different assets. Our volunteer leaders and our intergenerational networks are some of the institution's most trusted intermediaries. They are members of the public who already extend trust to the institution and can transfer it to others. That is not a function many partners can replicate. It is ours to claim or to lose.

Claiming it requires us to think like strategists, not activity coordinators. We need to get in the room with executives — and yes, with the communications and PR colleagues we work alongside — and design a framework that generates trust for our institutions.

We need to investigate:

• What stories demonstrate our impact and our values?
• Who are our most shining examples?
• What are the most credible ways to tell their stories, and through whom?
• Which intermediaries can carry the torch, and what do they need from us to do it well?
• How are we building real connections between campus and community, not just inviting community onto campus for marketing purposes?

These are strategy questions that require collective masterminding across functions to answer well.

That is what claiming our seat at the table actually looks like. Not better events. Not more polished stories. A coordinated, institution-wide trust strategy in which alumni engagement is recognized as the relational infrastructure that makes the rest of it believable.

In five years, the institutions that thrived through this trust crisis will have been the ones whose alumni engagement leaders walked into the strategy room. Those who resist claiming this moment will not just be marginalized — they will be tethered to the institutions that did not survive.