Why Higher Ed Keeps Writing Past Its Own Audience

I’m going to complain for a moment, calmly.

Higher education has a writing problem, and it’s mostly self-inflicted.

I was reviewing a document recently that was meant to inform stakeholders. It was accurate, careful, and nearly unreadable. Not because the ideas were complex, but because the writing was distant.

That’s when I thought of Steven Pinker.

Pinker has a blunt explanation for bad writing: the curse of knowledge. Once you know something well, it becomes hard to imagine what it’s like not to know it. In higher education, this curse shows up everywhere.

We write policies as if readers already agree.
We write plans as if clarity is optional.
We write emails that protect us more than they help anyone.

We don’t write to be understood. We write to be correct.

And correctness, in academia, often hides behind density.

A Familiar Moment

A colleague once said to me, half joking, “I know what I meant when I wrote it.”

That sentence explains more about higher-ed communication than most reports ever will.

Writing becomes defensive. Sentences stack qualifiers. Ideas disappear under caution. Pinker calls this self-conscious prose. Writing that’s more worried about judgment than comprehension.

The irony is obvious. We work in learning institutions that regularly produce writing that resists learning.

Why This Actually Matters

This isn’t about style. It’s about trust.

When students can’t decode messages, they disengage.
When faculty get guidance that reads like legal text, they skim or ignore it.
When communities read mission statements that say everything and nothing, they tune out.

From a leadership seat, I’ve learned this the hard way:
clarity isn’t a courtesy. It’s a responsibility.

Pinker reminds us that good writing lets readers see something. Clear actors. Clear actions. Clear purpose. When we remove those, we don’t sound smarter. We sound unavailable.

The Real Complaint

Higher education is complex. That’s not the problem.

The problem is confusing complex thinking with complicated writing.

We don’t need fewer ideas.
We need fewer sentences that hide them.

Takeaway

Before sending anything, I now ask one question:

“If I read this cold, would I know what to do next?”

If the answer is no, the writing failed. Not the reader.

Clear writing doesn’t dumb things down.
It invites people in.

And institutions built on learning should know how to do that.

▶ Watch here: https://youtu.be/nBQPnvmaNcE?si=ZX752a–AV8y_aYi