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Mousetraps in Higher Education: Lessons on Shared Responsibility for Shared Success
HigherEdMilitary
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I recently came across a version of an old parable about a mousetrap, and it felt surprisingly relevant to higher education today.
A farmer was sitting in his chair reading a book when he saw a mouse scurry past him. Upset that the mouse might get into his food pantry, he decided to set a mousetrap. When the mouse saw the trap, he rushed through the farmyard to warn the other animals. "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!" The chicken looked up and said, "I am sorry, Mr. Mouse, but that is your problem. I do not ever go into the house." The pig replied, "I sympathize with your situation, but there is nothing I can do about it." The cow simply said, "A mousetrap?" That thing could never trap me. Why should I be concerned?” Feeling defeated, the mouse returned to the house.
That night, a sound echoed through the farmhouse: the snap of the mousetrap. The farmer's wife rushed to investigate. In the darkness, before she could see what had happened, she was bitten by a venomous snake whose tail had been caught in the trap. She became very ill. To nourish her, the farmer used the chicken to make chicken soup. When the soup did not help and her condition continued to worsen, concerned friends and neighbors came to visit. To feed the visitors, the farmer used the pig to make ham sandwiches. Eventually, the farmer's wife passed away. So many people attended the funeral that the farmer had to use the cow to provide enough roast to feed the gathered guests.
An owl perched in a nearby tree had watched the entire story unfold. Looking over the farmyard, the owl said, "A farm is an interconnected place. When one part goes uncared for, the whole farm shares in the consequences." The owl's lesson is one that higher education continues to learn.
Colleges and universities too often approach the needs of post-traditional students as one-off issues rather than institutional priorities. Adult learners are expected to fit within systems originally designed for recent high school graduates. Military-connected students are frequently overlooked because they represent a smaller percentage of the student body, as though the size of a population determines the value of its success. Students who are parents encounter similar assumptions when advocating for childcare, family-friendly policies, flexible scheduling, or other forms of support. Because each group is viewed in isolation, institutions often fail to recognize a larger reality: when students are unable to access the support they need to persist and succeed, the consequences extend far beyond the individual. The absence of accessible support services weakens the institution's ability to support student success and affects not only military-connected students but also adult learners, students who are parents, caregivers, and countless others who rely on the same resources to enroll, persist, and graduate. The assumptions may not always be spoken aloud, but they often shape institutional priorities. Yet the headlines facing higher education today tell a different story.
Fewer high school graduates are enrolling in college, and the overall population of college-age students is shrinking, a trend experts refer to as the "demographic cliff." Institutions across the country are confronting enrollment declines, reductions in state funding, and growing financial pressures. Campus leaders are searching for new pathways to sustainability, retention, and growth, often while overlooking the student populations best positioned to help them get there. In many cases, the solution may not require finding entirely new student populations, but rather better supporting and engaging those who are already present yet frequently overlooked.
Post-traditional students bring diverse experiences and perspectives to campus. They also bring something institutions urgently need right now: enrollment potential, retention strength, and access to significant federal and state funding streams. When institutions fail to consider these populations, they often overlook part of the solution to the very challenges they are trying to solve. Support for military-connected students too often lives in a single office, coordinator, or veterans center. Those offices do essential work, but a campus can't become genuinely inclusive on the strength of one office alone. The animals on the farm eventually learned that the mousetrap was never just the mouse's problem. What threatened one member of the farm ultimately affected them all. Higher education needs the same recognition: supporting military- connected students can't rest on veterans’ services alone. It has to be shared by admissions counselors, faculty, academic advisors, financial aid professionals, registrars, student affairs practitioners, and senior leaders alike.
What the Owl Would Tell Campus Leaders
The lesson of the mousetrap story isn't simply that institutions should care more. It's that investment in one part of the community tends to strengthen the whole institution. For colleges and universities trying to support military-connected students during a period of real institutional strain, the owl might offer the following advice.
Belonging Starts with Shared Experiences
Military-connected students often describe feeling isolated or disconnected from campus life. Giving them space to engage in meaningful discussions around shared experiences, service, identity, transition, can build belonging where little currently exists. Joshua Shinn's military-connected reading group model is one example, offering students a place to talk through literature alongside their own experiences of service and transition. Programs like this don't require much in the way of resources, but they can move the needle on engagement, persistence, and a felt sense of community.
See Childcare As a Retention Strategy
Not every institution can run an on-campus childcare center, but every institution can help students navigate childcare challenges some other way: referral partnerships with local providers, priority placement agreements, negotiated discounts, or emergency care options. Military-connected students and student parents stand to benefit most directly, but these partnerships end up supporting any student trying to balance school with family responsibilities. Childcare gaps show up later as enrollment drops, withdrawals, and lower graduation rates.
When Credits Don't Transfer, Students Suffer
Military-connected students are among the most mobile populations in higher education, often arriving with academic credit from community colleges, joint services transcript (JST) training evaluations, and coursework accumulated across multiple institutions as a result of frequent relocations. Too often, that credit does not count toward a degree once students arrive on campus. Reviewing transfer policies with an eye toward equity is particularly important. Every credit a student loses adds time, cost, and frustration to their educational journey. Over time, those barriers accumulate, making it more difficult for students to persist and ultimately complete their degree. Fair and transparent transfer credit policies do more than support military-connected students. By ensuring that previously earned learning is recognized, institutions reduce barriers to degree completion, improve student retention, and create clearer pathways for all students entering with transfer credit.
Families Are Part of the Support System
Military-connected students rarely move through higher education alone. Spouses, parents, children, caregivers, and extended family often shape the decisions that determine whether a student enrolls, stays, or finishes. Treating families as partners in that process, rather than as outsiders, opens the door to family-inclusive programming and outreach that can meaningfully strengthen a student's support network.
The Payoff Comes After Graduation
Supporting military-connected students pays off well past commencement. Students who feel genuinely welcomed and valued tend to stay connected to an institution long after they leave it, often as advocates, mentors, community partners, and eventually donors. What an institution invests in today can become the relationship that sustains it tomorrow.
Student Success is a Campus-Wide Commitment
A military-inclusive campus can't rest on the shoulders of a veterans center or a single staff member. Faculty, advisors, admissions counselors, financial aid professionals, registrars, and senior leaders all engage the student experience in ways that matter. The institutions that get this right treat military-connected students' success as something the whole campus owns together, not a responsibility handed off to one office.
The owl's wisdom holds up just as well today. The students and families institutions have too often treated as someone else's concern are frequently the very people best positioned to help a struggling campus find its footing. Every campus has a version of the chicken, the pig, and the cow: offices and departments that assume a given student population isn't really their concern. The mousetrap parable isn't subtle about where that thinking leads. But it also isn't asking for grand gestures. A reading group. A childcare referral list. An equitable transfer credit review. None of these require a farm to be rebuilt from scratch, only a willingness to notice that the trap was never just the mouse's problem. In the end, supporting military-connected students is not about serving one population. It is about strengthening the entire institution.
