Brain Waves Blog

Recently, I spoke to student success professionals about the student experience data available through social intelligence. As always, I spent some time talking about Reddit, and the role it plays—particularly for younger people—in experience sharing, information gathering, and ultimately decision making. After the session I learned that some attendees were uncomfortable with real-life examples shared that mentioned their college.

I’m going to be vulnerable in this post. This is intentional; you haven’t stumbled across a mistakenly published diary entry. Our educational institutions serve humans with a myriad of feelings, challenges, and experiences. This is mine, and I hope it helps you understand others’.

Reddit filed to go public on the New York Stock Exchange last month, and I paid close attention. Its prospectus highlights the impact the anonymous forum site has on public trust—and how higher education leaders can leverage the insight within its 17 billion posts and comments to rebuild trust and inform a proactive, audience-centric market strategy. Higher education didn’t understand the impact Facebook would have on its operations when it went public over a decade ago. Don’t make the same mistake with Reddit. Here’s what you need to know.

Updated 9.5.2025

I've given many presentations on Reddit over the last few years and after many of them, an attendee will privately come up after and ask a question I’ve become used to fielding. It usually goes something like this.

Before you jump into Reddit, get familiar with these rules of engagement.