Emma Whitford
Emma Whitford reports on how colleges and universities manage faculty, money and governance, with a particular focus on labor conflicts, academic freedom and the business side of higher education. She connects individual campus disputes and policy decisions to broader structural trends, showing how fiscal pressures, political intervention and changing enrollment patterns reshape faculty work and institutional priorities.
Faculty labor, unions and shared governance
Whitford’s core coverage tracks the evolving relationship between faculty and institutional leadership, especially around labor, unionization and governance. She covers “all things faculty,” including labor issues and unions, shared governance, academic freedom, hiring, tenure and research. Her reporting regularly follows faculty organizing drives, contract negotiations and strikes, and examines how union activity intersects with institutional decision making and board priorities. She pays close attention to shared governance disputes, documenting cases where faculty senates and administrations clash over program closures, leadership transitions or policy changes, and highlighting how those conflicts affect campus climate and trust.
Academic freedom, protest and political pressure
Whitford frequently reports on academic freedom and campus protest, especially when external political forces or public controversy collide with institutional norms. Her work includes coverage of student and faculty demonstrations and administrative responses, such as her reporting on a college president who offered to pay fines for protesting students and defended their rights to assembly and free speech. She also writes about how state-level politics and funding decisions shape what faculty can teach and research, and how governing boards and legislatures respond to contentious speech or activism on campus. Across these stories, she focuses on the practical consequences for faculty members’ work, job security and ability to speak openly, rather than treating academic freedom as an abstract principle.
Finance, enrollment and program restructuring
Whitford brings a business and finance lens to higher education decisions that directly affect faculty roles and academic offerings. At Forbes, she writes about business, finance and technology in the K-12 and higher education sectors, with recurring attention to how funding models, debt, and market dynamics influence institutional choices. Earlier reporting includes coverage of how access to public four-year higher education is changing, and how public college systems respond to enrollment declines and budget stress. She has reported on area studies and foreign language centers withering without federal support, detailing how historic funding streams tied to national security priorities have been cut and what that means for faculty positions and specialized programs. In stories on tuition and affordability, such as coverage of Whitman College capping tuition at 10 percent of family income, she links pricing strategies and revenue models to long-term sustainability and faculty workloads.
Policy analysis and national context
Beyond campus-level stories, Whitford provides policy-focused coverage that situates higher education decisions within state and federal frameworks. Her work has examined where states are boosting or slashing higher education funding amid the pandemic, explaining how those shifts filter down to faculty hiring, contract renewals and program viability. She reports on how different states approach higher education governance and academic freedom, including survey results and expert analysis on pressures facing institutions. Her cross-beat reporting in K-12 and higher education business also covers education companies, technology tools and financial products that influence how institutions operate and how faculty and students experience teaching and learning. Across these pieces, she favors detailed, data-informed stories that draw on reports, surveys and financial documents to show the concrete impact of policy choices on campus life.
Investigations and legal scrutiny around technology
Whitford also writes on legal and regulatory scrutiny of emerging technologies used in education and beyond. In recent coverage of discovery disputes involving ChatGPT, she has reported on a judge’s criticism of extensive redactions in discovery logs, placing courtroom developments in context for institutions and companies that use or develop AI tools. This strand of her work connects technology regulation, transparency and risk management back to education settings, where faculty and administrators are grappling with how to integrate or oversee new tools.
4 more education journalists.
Abdul Latif Jameel
Abdul Latif Jameel publishes long-form, research-led pieces on how emerging technologies and scientific advances reshape education, industry, and society. He writes for the Abdul Latif Jameel masthead at the intersection of learning, innovation, and applied science, with a focus on technology, skills, and the future of learning. He explains complex fields such as quantum sensing in clear, accessible terms, breaking down frontier science and tying it to real-world applications. His coverage links breakthroughs in sensing, data, and automation to training, curriculum, and lifelong learning. He treats education as an applied system connected to industry, policy, infrastructure, and human development. He reports in an analytical, explanatory style, using research, pilots, and large-scale initiatives to examine how technologies are implemented, evaluated, and scaled in learning and training environments.
Adria Iraheta
Adria Iraheta is a community-focused reporter at Denver7, distinct for centering students, families and residents in every story about schools, neighborhoods and public services. She covers how decisions by school districts, local agencies and public institutions land in daily life, with a particular focus on Aurora and Arapahoe County. Her beat sits at the intersection of education, community issues, public services, safety, infrastructure, health and climate, from job cuts in a school district to a new transit safety app, DMV outages, street changes and record heat waves. With a decade of local television reporting experience, she reports on the ground in specific local scenes, using plain language, direct questions to officials and clear explanations to show how policies, programs and changes affect the people who live, study and work in Colorado communities.
Alan J. Borsuk
Alan J. Borsuk stands out for connecting what happens in schools to the policy and political decisions behind them. He writes in-depth K-12 education analysis for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and serves as a senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette University Law School. His work focuses on Milwaukee Public Schools, school choice, literacy, teacher pipelines, and school accountability. He uses long-range perspective, detailed reporting, and structured analysis to explain how reforms unfold, why they stall, and what they mean for students and leaders. He has also written on vouchers, Teach for America, discipline, and teacher evaluation, drawing on decades as a reporter and editor on education and public policy.
Alexandra Hardle
Alexandra Hardle brings a watchdog lens to K-12 schools, using concrete incidents to map how district power, oversight and accountability work in real life. She covers K-12 education for The Arizona Republic, focusing on school systems, governance and the lived impact of policy on students, families and educators. Her reporting shows how school governance can fail students and staff and what that reveals about district culture. She often covers flashpoints, such as the Nazi salute fallout in the Deer Valley district, as windows into deeper dysfunction, tracking how leadership responds, how trust breaks down and how conflicts unfold in public meetings. Her work sits at the intersection of accountability reporting and community stories, grounded in public records, formal rules and multiple stakeholder perspectives, with clear, direct language that explains how institutions make decisions and how ordinary people experience them.