A recent conversation on Nathan Wrigley’s show brings Rachel Cherry and Alex Aspinall together to unpack the newly released “State of WordPress in Higher Education 2025” report. Rachel founded WP Campus, a nonprofit that supports WordPress users in colleges and universities; she serves as WP Campus Director of Technology and works as an accessibility developer at the University of Rochester. Alex represents Human Made, an enterprise WordPress agency with deep experience building large-scale, governance-heavy platforms for complex organizations.
About WP Campus and Human Made
WP Campus began ten years ago to build a dedicated community around higher education and WordPress. It runs conferences, conducts research, offers professional development, publishes resources, and advocates for accessibility and good governance. Its goal is to provide evidence and practical guidance so institutions can make informed platform decisions — for example, funding an accessibility audit of Gutenberg.
Human Made joined the effort after conversations and event collaborations. Their enterprise experience with multi-site, governance, and scale made them a natural partner for research and producing the joint report.
Key findings from the 2025 report
– Block editor adoption: Only about 40% of institutions reported using the block editor across all their sites; many use it only partially, and 16% don’t use it at all. Adoption tends to be gradual because of enterprise complexity, governance needs, and training requirements.
– Full Site Editing (FSE): Adoption is far lower; roughly 62% said they are not using FSE. Primary concerns are governance and loss of control—institutions fear editors could inadvertently break branding or accessibility when many content creators are non-technical.
– Resource constraints: Web teams are often small relative to the number of sites and users they support. A few people may manage hundreds of sites, and limited headcount and budgets slow major changes and upgrades.
– Scale and multi-site usage: Higher ed frequently runs multi-site setups and “domain of one’s own” models that let departments, labs, and faculty spin up independent sites. This leads to hundreds of varied sites per institution serving marketing, research, publishing, and internal use cases.
– Plugin ecosystem challenges: Plugin bloat and accessibility gaps are common problems. Off-the-shelf solutions often don’t meet strict accessibility or governance requirements, so institutions frequently invest in custom development — which is costly to build and maintain.
– Satisfaction and retention: Around three-quarters of respondents said WordPress meets or exceeds expectations. Many institutions remain committed to WordPress; 49% said they would not move to a different CMS even if they had the time and resources.
– Enterprise feature gaps: Institutions want more enterprise-focused tooling in WordPress: governance controls, centralized management, data-sharing features, and scalable workflows are commonly requested.
Why these findings make sense
– Slow, deliberate adoption: Higher education tends to schedule platform changes around redesign cycles (typically every 3–5 years) to reduce disruption. Shifts to new editors or paradigms require retraining, updated documentation, and compliance checks, so institutions proceed cautiously.
– Governance and compliance: Universities must enforce accessibility, legal, and branding standards. Providing wide editing power through FSE without guardrails risks noncompliance and reputational harm, so institutions seek ways to balance flexibility with centralized oversight.
– Legal and accessibility pressures: U.S. institutions that receive federal funding face Section 508 and similar obligations; laws in parts of Europe can be even stricter. Accessibility requirements push teams to vet or custom-build plugins and themes, increasing cost and complexity.
– Diverse use cases: Higher ed supports marketing sites, internal apps, archives, publishing platforms, student portals, and departmental blogs. While WordPress is extensible, it’s not always the optimal tool for every system, and institutions commonly rely on mixed technology stacks.
Agency roles and handoffs
Agencies like Human Made usually partner with central web teams and coordinate with design, marketing, platform, and other specialists. Successful projects mirror institutional structures and are collaborative.
Handoffs prioritize training core web teams rather than every end user. Agencies supply documentation, recorded training, and follow-up sessions, but ongoing one-to-one support often remains necessary—especially in environments where governance restricts editing capabilities.
Opportunities and next steps
– Share real-world examples: WP Campus encourages institutions to publish case studies and lessons learned so peers can better evaluate new features. Practical examples reduce uncertainty and help teams manage risk.
– Build enterprise tooling: There’s a clear need for plugins and platforms that address governance, accessible component libraries, scalable provisioning, and multi-site management. Vendors and developers can respond with enterprise-focused solutions.
– Community collaboration: Developers, agencies, and vendors are invited to read the report, join WP Campus Slack channels, and collaborate with the higher ed community to solve shared problems.
Where to learn more and get involved
– WP Campus (wpcampus.org): Join the Slack community, download the full research report, see events, subscribe to newsletters, and learn about membership.
– Human Made (humanmade.com): Contact for enterprise WordPress services and follow their Word on the Future newsletter for related insights.
Conclusion
The 2025 State of WordPress in Higher Education report describes pragmatic, cautious adoption. Institutions value WordPress for cost, extensibility, and multi-site capabilities, but resource limits, governance needs, and accessibility obligations slow adoption of newer features like the block editor and Full Site Editing. There is appetite for more enterprise-oriented tools and greater sharing of institutional experiences. WP Campus and partners such as Human Made aim to surface needs and foster collaboration so WordPress can better meet the complex, large-scale demands of higher education.