The biggest content governance challenge for universities? Academic content.
Ask a communications professional at a university about their biggest digital challenge right now, and the conversation will quickly turn to student recruitment. Understandable, as student numbers shrink, so does government funding, and competition for students has grown sharply as a result.
But look at how a university organises its content, and a different, more stubborn problem emerges. The biggest content governance challenge at most universities isn't student recruitment content. It's academic content. Research studies, publications, project pages, expert profiles and news about research findings together make up by far the largest stream of content a university produces. And it's the stream with the least oversight.
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Everyone publishes. But who's keeping an eye on the whole picture?
A doctoral researcher wants to raise the profile of her work, so she creates a page on the faculty site. A research group launches its own microsite because the CMS doesn't give them the flexibility they need. A professor writes an opinion piece that doesn't fit anywhere obvious, so it gets uploaded as a PDF. A faculty team launches a news section that goes quiet after three months because nobody has the time to keep it running.
Each of these initiatives is understandable and can be genuinely valuable. But without proper oversight, the result is a patchwork: hundreds of pages, each telling their own story, in their own tone, in their own corner of the site, with no coherent picture of what the university stands for. The knock-on effect is duplicate content competing for the same searches and the same users, undermining both visibility and usability. And when content isn't properly maintained, the website gradually becomes an archive full of outdated, irrelevant material.
For years, this was primarily a management and quality problem. Now it's becoming a visibility problem too, as AI systems like ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews — increasingly determine which sources people are shown. When research, expert profiles and project information are scattered across different websites and formats, it becomes much harder for these systems to recognise and surface a university's expertise.
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How academic content attracts students and partners
Academic visibility isn't just a communications issue. It has direct strategic value. A university that isn't clearly visible as an authority in its fields makes it harder for businesses, policymakers and researchers to find the right expertise. Research by Edelman and LinkedIn shows that thought leadership plays a significant role in partner selection and collaboration decisions. For universities, the same principle applies: visibility builds trust.
That might sound far-fetched, but the connections are tangible. A business looking for a research partner, or a policymaker wanting to consult an expert, starts their search online. Research by QS shows that online information and institutional reputation play an important role during that research phase. The way research, expertise and societal impact are made visible directly shapes that impression.
And it's precisely at those moments that universities with fragmented, outdated or inconsistent academic content miss out.
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What content governance solves for universities
A significant part of the problem doesn't lie with researchers themselves. Researchers are experts in their field, not necessarily in online communications. And they don't need to be. Content governance ensures that academic knowledge is supported by clear processes, formats and editorial guidance, so that expertise becomes more visible without putting extra pressure on researchers.
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Content governance isn't about more rules. It's about clear choices: which expertise does the university want to make visible, for whom, and through which channels? In concrete terms, that means:
Start with content strategy. Determine which content belongs on which channel, with what goal, and for which audience. An outside-in perspective is the starting point, not broadcasting. Content should support organisational goals and meet user expectations.
Ownership by research domain. Researchers themselves aren't responsible for the online visibility of their work. A communications professional who supports them and safeguards quality is.
Clear formats and channels. What becomes a news article? What becomes a long-read? What belongs on the expert profile page, and what goes in a press release? Without those decisions in place, every researcher decides for themselves and that's how the patchwork grows.
A bridge between research and communications. Researchers aren't writers, and they don't need to be. But there needs to be a structural collaboration between subject-matter expertise and communications professionals. That's exactly what governance organises.
Review cycles aligned with the academic year. Update expert profiles after a PhD award. Archive project pages when research concludes. Actively translate new research findings into accessible content. This all sounds logical but without fixed processes in place, it simply doesn't happen.
Because academic content plays such a central role in reputation, visibility and knowledge-sharing, this area often deserves the first focus within any content governance programme. Not because other content matters less, but because this is where the largest volume of content accumulates. And where the impact of fragmentation becomes apparent most quickly.
Wageningen University & Research: from fragmented research content to a clear online strategy
Wageningen University & Research (WUR) recognised this challenge and used it as the starting point for a fundamental rethink of its online presence. Not by producing more content, but by first getting clear on its online vision and strategy, and building the new structure, content governance and ultimately the website from there.
The result: a website that reflects WUR's academic identity, is more easily found by the right audiences, and provides a strong foundation for visibility in both search engines and AI systems. Read the full case study here.
Do these challenges sound familiar?
In our whitepaper, we show how universities can get a firmer grip on their content, make academic expertise more visible, and build a solid foundation for discoverability in search engines and AI systems.
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