Lessons from Higher Ed PodCon 2026: The State of Podcasting in Higher Education

Higher Ed PodCon 2026 is an event built specifically for the people making podcasts inside colleges and universities. The conference, founded by Podium Podcast Co.’s Neil McPhedran, is now in its second year and includes a community representing approximately 293 colleges and universities and more than 1,600 podcasts. 

Higher Ed PodCon exists because podcasting in academia has grown into its own distinct practice. Part of that growth tracks with the audience: an estimated 35 million Gen Z Americans now listen to podcasts monthly, with 63% of 13-to-24-year-olds tuning in within the past month, according to data from Edison Research’s The Infinite Dial 2025. For institutions trying to reach that same age group to recruit prospective students, podcasting has become a strategic marketing channel, one with goals and constraints that most podcast industry events don’t address.

As an award-winning podcast services firm that has represented numerous higher education institution podcasts from Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and the University of Tennessee, The Podglomerate presented our insights at Higher Ed PodCon 2026. Learn more about our session and hear key takeaways from the conference below. And if you’re looking to stay current on what’s happening in the industry, check out our services or subscribe to our newsletter.

Disclaimer: The Podglomerate attended Higher Ed PodCon as a Gold sponsor of the event.

A Niche Conference for a Niche Audience

Podcasting is a part of a lot of industries now, and higher education is no exception. What’s interesting is how institutions use podcasting for reasons that have very little to do with audience growth or ad revenue. A university podcast might exist for brand elevation, donor cultivation, or graduate admissions. Some faculty use their shows to satisfy tenure-track outreach requirements, since public engagement hours often count towards those obligations regardless of how many people actually listen. Those goals don’t map cleanly onto what a typical commercial podcast optimizes for, which is why Higher Ed PodCon 2026 has unique value.

Because of this focus, every interaction counts. Instead of navigating dozens of vendors pitching hardware and software, attendees spent time networking with other people who share the same concerns, such as funding constraints, bureaucratic red tape for approvals, or breaks between semesters which could affect production. This intimate conference setting provided the perfect stage to learn from others while gaining new insights during many of the scheduled sessions. Dan Christo, COO at The Podglomerate, conducted one of those sessions: Podcast Tech Stack 101.

Inside Our Session: Podcast Tech Stack 101

Dan’s presentation on Podcast Tech Stack 101 was built for people who are just starting to think seriously about the tools behind their show rather than the show itself. The session opened by framing July 2026 as an unusually volatile moment for podcast technology, with audio and video standards shifting underneath creators in real time.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s long-standing measurement definitions now sit alongside a brand-new standard from the Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting, and the two don’t even agree on how long a “play” has to last to count. Layer onto that Apple’s rollout of video support, YouTube’s separate and still-evolving relationship with podcast content, and Spotify’s comparatively closed ecosystem, and you get a podcast landscape where the tools you pick at the start can quietly limit your options later.

His recommendation for attendees beginning to build their tech stack was to treat the fundamentals as a checklist rather than a single decision. Pick a hosting platform with the video integrations you’ll eventually want, not just the ones you need today. Check whether dynamic ad insertion (DAI) is available across the platforms you care about, since that varies more than most new podcasters expect. And resist the pull toward downloads and lifetime totals as the primary analytics worth monitoring.

Simply put, engagement beats vanity. Unique listeners, consumption rate, and platform concentration will tell you far more about a show’s health than your podcast’s download count ever will.

A Different Set of Goals in Higher Education

That gap between creative work and operations showed up throughout the conference. We discovered that several Higher Ed PodCon attendees we spoke with didn’t actually know what platform their show ran on since someone else entirely handled production. Operational and budget conversations often leave out the people making creative and editorial decisions on a higher ed show, a disconnect that shows up in some corporate and commercial podcasts too, just with lower stakes attached. 

The reasons behind starting a podcast in higher education can vary. Questions around audience and metrics can be difficult to answer cleanly in an academic setting. For instance, a show that ties to a research quota or serves as an oral history archive doesn’t have the same type of audience or revenue potential that a commercial podcast does. That ambiguity is worth nothing when you’re advocating for a larger budget or continued institutional support.

Also, once a school publishes a higher ed podcast, it isn’t competing only within its academic institution anymore. It’s out there vying for the same listener and viewer attention as every other podcast. The institutional context will shape how the team makes the show, but it doesn’t shrink the market it has to succeed in. As mentioned earlier, schools also have constraints that affect production and marketing, such as a limited team, limited budget, strict IT policies, and a summer blackout window between school years when institutional approval processes stop entirely. 

Conclusion

Higher Ed PodCon 2026 shows that a higher ed podcast lives under a different set of pressures than most shows: budgets tied to grant cycles for funding or committee approval, part-time or shared staffing, and goals that might have nothing to do with downloads at all. But once a school publishes that podcast, it’s in the same open market as any other podcast. This means the tech stack decisions, the audience questions, and the “why are we doing this” conversations matter just as much as they do anywhere else in the industry. 

If you’re building or growing a podcast inside a university or similar institution and want help thinking through your tech stack, your goals, or your growth strategy, The Podglomerate builds its podcasting consulting services for exactly this kind of project. Reach out to us to learn more, and make sure to sign up for our free newsletter.