The only thing scarier than a horror flick is a university without a content governance plan! In honor of the spookiest fall holiday of the year, we’ve put together 3 short, spooky, fictional (but very realistic) stories inspired by common challenges higher ed web teams face and the lessons universities can learn from them.
Lack of a true governance model can be a nightmare for higher ed teams if not handled properly.
“A proper governance model is the hero of the story that always helps save the day.”
A strong governance model helps your team establish clear responsibilities, content policies, accessibility standards, and publishing workflows. It provides the structure needed to prevent small website problems from becoming larger institutional headaches.
Here are some spooky stories that all higher ed teams should work together to avoid:
It was a dark and stormy night.
A parent researching your university's tuition costs opens their laptop, searches Google, and discovers two different tuition rates on your university's website. One page lists the current tuition, while another displays information from three years ago. The horror!
This particular "ghost page" is an outdated webpage that remains publicly available on your university's website. Because the page is still accessible, search engines may continue to index and display it in search results.
The current and up-to-date tuition page is likely managed by the admissions department, but your admissions department may have no knowledge of this secondary, outdated page created by a different department. Not only is this misinformation confusing for human eyes, but it is also confusing for AI-driven search queries and can contribute to AI hallucinations about your university, which increases the risk of AI generating incorrect information for students, parents, and donors, leaving them wondering which info is correct.
Fortunately, this ghost can be put to rest. The first step is identifying the university's authoritative tuition page and correcting or removing the conflicting information. If the outdated page no longer serves a purpose, the web team should determine whether redirecting visitors to the current tuition page is appropriate.
To prevent similar problems from returning, proper web governance establishes clear responsibilities and maintenance procedures:
Assign a content owner to each page, along with a backup who can assume responsibility when the primary owner leaves or changes roles.
Set regular content review cycles, prioritizing high-impact information such as tuition rates, financial aid details, and application deadlines before each admissions cycle.
Create a policy for reviewing, updating, archiving, redirecting, or removing outdated pages so inaccurate information doesn't remain publicly accessible.
A Content Management System (CMS) can help manage workflows, permissions, and content, contributing to proper governance. For example, a CMS can support assigned publishing responsibilities and approval workflows that help ensure important content receives appropriate review.
When every page of your university website is treated with the importance of a university ambassador, clear ownership, regular reviews, and established content policies can help prevent outdated information from misleading prospective students and their families. Coupled with the capabilities of a CMS, these practices help protect your university's credibility and support its enrollment goals.
Deep within a university's academic department, a dedicated content contributor is responsible for keeping departmental webpages accurate and up to date. She's knowledgeable, hardworking, and eager to help, but unbeknownst to her, she possesses a frightening amount of publishing power.
Her publishing permissions were granted years earlier when an overwhelmed central web team delegated content management responsibilities to individual departments. Over time, these permissions expanded without clearly defining which parts of the website contributors should be allowed to modify.
Like many contributors across campus, she manages her department's content independently. While this flexibility helps keep information current, the university has not established consistent permissions, training, or approval requirements for changes that could affect other departments.
One day, while updating her department's navigation, the contributor unknowingly modifies a shared navigation component used across multiple university webpages. Because her account has permission to edit shared website elements, a key navigation button disappears from several departmental pages when the change is published.
Students and faculty suddenly struggle to locate important resources, and the central web team must investigate the unexpected change. The contributor never intended to disrupt the website. She simply wasn't given the boundaries or training needed to understand the broader impact of her edits.
Fortunately, the university has a hero capable of preventing this nightmare from happening again: a well-defined governance model!
The central web team investigates the issue, restores the affected navigation, and reviews the permissions that allowed a departmental contributor to modify shared website components. With a clear governance plan, the university can establish safeguards that protect the website without limiting contributors' ability to manage their own content.
Establish role-based permissions to limit unnecessary power
Example: Content Editor, Content Approver, Web Administrator, CMS Administrator
Create publishing workflows that specify which changes require approval, particularly changes to shared navigation, templates, and other university-wide website elements. A CMS can help enforce these workflows through permissions and approval processes.
Provide practical training for content contributors and managers, including how to recognize shared components, understand publishing permissions, and request approval for changes outside their responsibilities.
With much power comes much responsibility. Having a hybrid governance model, for example, can help your university strike a balance between content contributors' flexibility and your web team’s policy structure.
By allowing departments to manage their own content while the central web team maintains oversight of shared elements, universities can empower contributors without compromising the integrity of the broader website.
The lesson? Your content contributors aren't the villains of this horror story. Without clear permissions, training, and appropriate tools, even the most well-intentioned employee can accidentally create a frightening situation.
From the cold, metal operating table, a lifeless being lay draped with a white cloth. Suddenly, a jolt of lightning surges through the being. “It is alive!” The mad scientists yell, pulling back the sheet, and it’s… it's… a higher ed website?
For years, your university’s central web team has attempted to manage your website. Over time, content contributors performed “unspeakable” experiments on the university website, mostly out of necessity, not malice.
The result: the university website seems to be made up of many different elements stitched together, a true Frankenstein website. The “monster” is uncoordinated, has trouble communicating consistently with others, and lacks a true identity. Here is the real-world issue:
Branding is inconsistent across the website’s pages
Not all PDFs, pages, or navigation items are accessible
Imagine a prospective student researching an academic program. They begin on a modern admissions page, navigate to a departmental website with completely different menus and branding, and eventually discover a program requirements PDF that isn't properly structured for screen readers. The student, who relies on a screen reader, struggles to understand the document and locate the information needed to apply.
The issue with a Frankenstein website goes beyond aesthetics. A website without accessibility publishing guidelines will have trouble providing an equitable experience for visitors who rely on assistive technologies, such as screen readers or keyboard navigation. In addition, brand erosion may create a more subtle distrust of your university and contribute to a lack of confidence from prospective students and parents.
Like Frankenstein's monster, the website has been assembled from many different pieces without a consistent framework to hold everything together. Without clear design standards and accessibility policies, some visitors may struggle to navigate the website or access important content. Here's how governance can turn this around:
Every university website has a story to tell. Effective governance helps ensure that story is communicated consistently and remains accessible to the broadest possible audience. By establishing shared design standards, accessibility responsibilities, and content review procedures, institutions can improve the user experience while reducing accessibility-related risks.
Establish accessibility oversight and accountability
Keep design templates uniform and fresh across pages
Establish consistent brand elements like font, colors, layouts, and major navigation items
Create a coordinated governance plan
Assess your current CMS for ways to automate the elements above
Avoid legal trouble and ensure your website conveys its points to the largest audience possible. Promote trust in your institution through brand consistency and easy web navigation. That way, your university website never becomes a Frankenstein's monster.
Every higher ed horror story starts with a lack of governance. Governance is all about having a formal plan for your team when it comes to your biggest day-to-day operations and long-term objectives. Assigning each page an owner, creating regular content review cycles, or thinking through an approval workflow may sound like a daunting task upfront, but it can save hundreds of hours and assist your institution in reaching its larger goals.
The right Content Management System (CMS), such as Cascade CMS, can help you and your team avoid ghost pages, Frankenstein websites, and content contributors with too much power to make website-wide mistakes. A CMS can help automate team workflows, content contributor permissions, accessibility checks, and AI-generated alt text to improve your team’s accessibility compliance.
To learn more about how Cascade CMS and Clive Web Personalization can help your institution manage its governance, reach out to us to schedule a quick call using the form below!
Last Updated: Oct 15, 2026 9:00 AM
