Midya U AdvisoryMarketing & AI Strategy for Higher Education
15+ years on the inside, both public and private sectors — building teams, running eight-figure budgets, absorbing every regulatory curveball, doing the actual work. My practice is practitioner-led and AI-accelerated.
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The state of affairs
Canadian higher education is in the worst stretch it's faced in a generation.
When the IRCC caps cut international enrolment, the tuition quietly propping up budgets went with it — thousands of layoffs, programs suspended by the hundred, campuses shrinking in real time. Two decades of "stable, welcoming Canada" took real damage in two years: rules that change every few months, students blamed for a housing crisis they didn't cause, applicants who no longer know what next year holds. Domestic enrolment can't cover revenue that size. This is the baseline now.
AI landed in the middle of it, from two directions. Inside, teams run a dozen tools nobody formally approved while IT, Privacy, Procurement, Legal, and Senate argue over a policy that still doesn't exist. Outside, prospective students ask ChatGPT and Gemini what your institution is like — and you have no idea what those tools are saying. Add the budget crunch, and a campus ends up paying six figures a year for AI it can't measure.
And most marketing operations are running on systems built for a world that's gone:
- Campaign playbooks built for a bigger funnel
- Over-indexed on a handful of source markets
- A brand written before the IRCC cap hit
- A pile of AI tools with no clear ROI that half the team has never opened
- No institutional AI policy
- A team that hasn't had time to think upstream in months
Most of it made sense five years ago. None of it does now.
AI accountability over AI adoption.
Services
Start here — fixed-scope engagements
AI Search Readiness Audit
Most prospective students aren't starting at Google anymore. They're asking ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini. This audit shows you what those tools say about your institution today, where the gaps are costing you applicants, and what to fix — no subscription attached.
Marketing Function Audit & Reset
An honest read on your marketing function — what's working, what's held together with string, and where it goes from here. The new reality is a smaller budget, a smaller team, and pressure to show ROI yesterday. I review the whole operation and rebuild it to fit what you actually have now.
Brand Repositioning
Your brand was probably written for a market that no longer exists — pre-cap, pre-cohort-decline, pre-AI-search. I name the gap between how you describe yourself and how applicants actually decide, then reposition you for the market that's in front of you.
Enrolment (SEM) Lifecycle Audit
Strategic Enrolment Management. If your SEM plan was written before the IRCC cap landed, it's probably pointing you down the wrong road. I map awareness through deposit, find where the funnel is leaking, and tell you what to fix before next intake hits.
AI Operations & Policy Blueprint
Where AI is actually pulling its weight inside your operations, where it's a liability in waiting, and the governance your institution needs before IT, Privacy, Procurement, Legal, and Senate will sign off on deploying anything. One policy faculty, students, legal, and marketing can all read the same way.
Bigger mandates
Function Build (6–12 months)
For education groups launching a new institution — or restructuring an existing one. I build the marketing function from zero: hire, train, hand it off, exit.
Executive Seats
Board-level strategy. Briefings for senior leadership teams. Keynotes for rooms that need someone who's actually done the work.
Custom Packages
Something specific in mind? Tell me what you're up against and I'll scope it.
Why work with me
Practitioner first.
VP of Marketing & Communications who built marcom teams and operations from scratch, public sector and private. I've done the job your marketing leaders are doing now, so the advice starts from how the work actually gets done.
AI accountability over AI adoption.
"Should we use AI" stopped being the question a while ago. What matters now is which tools, on which decisions, are actually earning their keep — and which ones are quietly draining your budget. I help you tell them apart, then act on it.
Sector-fluent on day one.
IRCC caps, PALs, provincial compliance. Board dynamics. Union politics. Faculty governance. I already know how it works, so you're not paying me to learn your sector on the clock.
Decisions, not decks.
No forty-slide deck nobody reads. You get something your team can use this week: a roadmap, an action plan, a policy draft, a hiring plan.
Independent, on purpose.
The big AI-search and consulting firms bundle their advice with a dashboard you have to subscribe to. I don't have one — no software, no reseller commissions, no tool I get a cut of. You're paying for the read and the plan, full stop.
In the tools every day.
I use the major AI tools daily and track what's new, what's improved, and what quietly got worse. When I tell you which ones are worth deploying, that comes from daily use rather than a vendor demo.
Expertise
Fifteen-plus years in the work, hands-on. Every audit, roadmap, and recommendation comes from having actually done it — and knowing what makes a difference from what just looks like progress.
About
I spent 15+ years inside Canadian higher education marketing, public and private — building teams from scratch, running $17M+ annual budgets, and leading campaigns across domestic and international markets. Most recently as VP of Marketing & Communications at University Canada West.
Midya U Advisory is what comes next. After years inside higher ed watching the AI inflection land, I'm spending this chapter on the outside — helping marketing and communications leaders make hard calls in the toughest stretch our industry has seen. The work is anchored in higher education and reaches into other sectors facing their own version of the same shift.
Insights
Field notes on higher ed marketing, brand, enrolment, and AI — from inside the work.
Every Study Destination Is Repricing at Once. Here's the Playbook for the Next 18 Months.
When every destination tightens at once, the students don't disappear. They're shopping harder, comparing more countries, and deciding later.
What ChatGPT Tells a 17-Year-Old About Your University
She opens her phone and asks about your university. The answer comes back in five seconds — and you have never seen it.
The AI Policy Your Senate Will Actually Approve
Most campuses have an AI policy "in progress." Far fewer have one in force. The gap between those two states is where the risk lives.
FAQ
What does a fixed-scope audit involve?
A defined scope, a set timeline, and a named deliverable — agreed before we start. I review your documents, data, and systems, interview the people who run the work, and hand you a written readout: what's working, what isn't, and what to do about it, in order. Most audits run a few weeks from kickoff to readout.
Who do you work with?
Universities and colleges, both public and private, along with education groups and organizations in other sectors working through the same shift. Client work stays confidential — I don't publish client names or case studies without permission.
Will you work within our governance — IT, Privacy, Procurement, Legal, Senate?
Yes. That's the job. Public institutions run on rules, and recommendations that ignore them don't survive first contact. Everything I hand you is designed to pass review by the offices that have to sign off on it.
Do you sell or resell any software?
No. No software, no subscriptions, no reseller commissions, no tools I get a cut of. When I recommend a tool, it's because it earns its place.
What does it cost?
Every engagement is fixed-scope, so pricing is set to the scope and agreed before we start — no hourly meters, no open-ended retainers. We go through pricing together on the discovery call.
How does an engagement start?
A thirty-minute discovery call. You tell me what you're trying to achieve; I tell you honestly whether I'm the right person to help. If it's a fit, you get a fixed-scope proposal within days.
Start a conversation
Discovery calls are thirty minutes. No deck. No pitch. I want to know two things:
— What are you actually trying to achieve?
— Am I the right person to help you get there?
Book a discovery call →