Higher Education Podcasts for 2022

My friend Bryan Alexander recently asked which podcasts relating to higher education I would recommend, and the list grew so long that I thought I’d better post it here rather than try to jam it into a comment somewhere else.

The list shows that my interests lean heavily toward educational technology and open education. I’m actually not including all of the ones to which I’m subscribed, since, like any program, some of them no longer produce new episodes and this is meant to be a list of what’s current. I’m providing links to their sites, but they should be discoverable by name through just about any podcast service.

Obviously at the top is The EdUp Experience. Their flagship show is a crown jewel of higher education podcasting, with hundreds of high quality episodes released in just a few years and more dropping all the time. As if that weren’t enough, host Joe Sallustio and producer Elvin Freytes have parlayed the wild success of this first podcast into a network of shows about education with various themes, including technology, K-12 issues, disruption, social justice, and many more.

IngenioUs is another great one. I enjoy the longer episodes hosted by Melissa Morriss-Olson, but I really appreciate David Staley’s outstanding short audio essays, many of which offer more insight in just a few minutes than one might ever think possible. He’s thought about higher education a lot, and it shows!

FutureU is very strong. Journalist Jeff Selingo and author Michael Horn have been around, seen it all, and are great communicators. I appreciate their unique format of having a short interview with a guest, then after a short break discussing it between themselves. The EdSurge Podcast, hosted by Jeff Young, also has a polished journalistic style one might expect from that organization.

There are a few podcasts that are great in terms of content, but I think deserve special mention for their presenters. These include The eLearning Podcast; because I really like host Stephen Ladek’s crisp, positive style; Teaching in Higher Ed , because listening to Bonni Stachowiak feels like listening to a friend you haven’t met yet; and Enrollment Growth University — despite the name, episodes range in topic and aren’t solely about enrollment growth, and Eric Olsen is a really affirming, sincere interviewer.

Other higher education podcasts I enjoy include the following:

Finally, I wasn’t planning to include any that are no longer producing episodes, but I feel like I’d be remiss not to at least mention 25 Years of Ed Tech. Martin Weller of the Open University expanded his important historical book into an audio series that really is fascinating listening, especially given that higher education as a culture often has “innovation amnesia” about which of its approaches that many believe are novel have actually been tried before.