Recently published data from the educational consulting group EAB shows that first-year students at two-year colleges want help connecting with peers on campus; nearly half reported dissatisfaction with their social lives since starting college. The report outlines ways to create engagement and other priorities for community college students.
Community college in context: First- to second-year retention is the greatest predictor of completion for students enrolled in a two-year degree program, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
Community colleges are among the most diverse higher ed institutions, with students more likely to be working adults, parents and first-generation learners compared to their four-year peers.
The EAB data identifies key trends in first-year community college students’ experiences and how institutions can improve their retention.
Methodology
EAB’s survey included responses from over 12,600 first-year college students, including 1,531 enrolled in community colleges. The survey was fielded in February and March 2024.
The data: When asked to name the most disappointing elements of their college experience so far, students indicated they felt disconnected from the campus community. Forty-two percent of respondents said their social life was a top disappointment, followed by not making friends or meeting new people. An additional 35 percent of students said they felt as though they didn’t belong.
This mirrors results from a 2025 survey conducted by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab, which found that only 20 percent of two-year students rated their sense of social belonging at college as above average or excellent, with the greatest share of respondents indicating they have an average sense of belonging (49 percent). By comparison, 29 percent of four-year students said they had an above average or excellent sense of belonging.
EAB’s report recommends that two-year colleges create small interventions to support students’ desire for community, including arranging drop-in events, hobby groups or peer mentorship programs. Making clubs easier to join through flexible meeting times or virtual meetings can also accommodate learners’ busy schedules, according to the report.
One-third of respondents to EAB’s survey said they were disappointed by classes and academics, and one in five students said faculty had disappointed them.
EAB’s community college survey also found that 32 percent of respondents had experienced bias or exclusion in some capacity since starting college, with the greatest share of respondents saying they faced criticism for their physical appearance or for the high school they attended. The results indicate a need for mechanisms for students to report harassment and connect with mental health supports, according to EAB’s report.
When asked what a “safe campus” means to them, the greatest share of community college respondents selected sufficient support for mental health and wellness (67 percent) and low or no property crime (67 percent). A similar number indicated that low incidence of sexual assault was key to creating a safe campus environment (66 percent).
Mental health concerns are one of the top reasons students of all backgrounds leave higher education, but community college students are even more vulnerable because they can be less financially secure or have fewer resources to address poor mental health.
However, community college counseling centers often have smaller staffs and serve only a fraction of their enrolled students; 2025 data from the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors found that only 5 percent of all community college students receive support from their counseling center.
When asked what best represents the value of higher education, successful job placement after graduation was the top choice among community college students (44 percent), followed by availability of scholarships (42 percent). Internships, co-ops and active learning experiences (33 percent) were less important than generous financial aid awards (38 percent) and moderate tuition prices.
Few have mastered the art of anticipation like Taylor Swift. Even before her album The Life of a Showgirl hit the shelves, she had captivated audiences and dominated the conversation. What’s remarkable isn’t just her star power; it’s the deliberate marketing strategies that blend spectacle, authenticity and fan participation. For leaders, marketers and brand builders in any industry, her approach offers a master class in how to create momentum before a product is even released.
Here are three standout observations from Swift’s launch strategy, along with actionable marketing tips you can put into practice.
Blending High Production With Authentic Self
Swift’s promotional rollout strikes a delicate balance between dazzling spectacle and grounded vulnerability. She teased the album with cinematic visuals—glittering production sets, stylized promo videos and bold aesthetics—while also poking fun at herself in playful, self-aware moments. She’ll show the sparkle, but also the cat hair on her dress.
Marketing Tip: Pair your most polished campaigns with candid behind-the-scenes content. Letting your audience see the human side of your work builds trust and relatability, while the high production values set the tone of aspiration. The contrast makes each side stronger.
Enrollment Marketing Tip: Mix in both staged and spontaneous content. Let your student ambassadors be themselves online and on tours. In your photos and social posts, let your content show some of the laughs, awkward moments and behind-the-scenes interactions.
Using Cryptic Drip Campaigns and Symbolism
From shifting color palettes to symbolic imagery and cryptic hints, Swift feeds her audience just enough to keep them speculating. Fans become detectives, dissecting every clue and turning the rollout itself into a participatory event. Bringing fans into her music in an intentional way is one of Taylor’s superpowers. Brands and even other industries adopt her motifs (orange, sparkles), amplifying her reach and making the symbols part of the cultural conversation.
Marketing Tip: Don’t reveal everything at once. Use teaser elements such as colors, tag lines or subtle product hints to spark curiosity and invite your audience to co-create the narrative. Anticipation builds energy and energy drives engagement.
Enrollment Market Tip: Add interactive content to everything you do, including countdown timers, digital scratch-offs and interactive maps to highlight your campus. Engage your prospective students as participants in the recruitment process.
Extending the Album Into Experiences
This launch was about more than just music. Swift staged limited theatrical events that mixed performance with commentary, offered exclusive vinyl editions with collectible packaging and framed her announcements as headline-worthy moments (like unveiling details on a podcast). The album is no longer just an album; it’s a multiplatform experience that fans feel they need to participate in.
Marketing Tip: Think beyond the product itself. Create extensions—events, companion content or limited-edition releases—that transform your core offering into a cultural experience. Scarcity, exclusivity and immersion turn products into movements.
Enrollment Marketing Tip: For every standard event you hold, there is an opportunity to create a special edition right alongside it. For example, before or after your normal local event or campus tour, hold an “exclusive session” for a certain group. Use your campus events, athletics, engineering or academic competitions to extend for a sneak peek or behind-the-scenes access for prospective students. Additionally, use events in your community, such as performing arts, minor league baseball, or an NFL game outing, to provide a special prospective student event. It does not need to cost much; be creative, test and adjust as you go.
Taylor Swift’s approach to The Life of a Showgirl is more than entertainment marketing—it’s a blueprint for building anticipation, deepening connection and extending brand impact. By blending high production with authenticity, leveraging symbolism and drip campaigns, and turning her release into an immersive experience, she ensures that the conversation begins long before release day.
For marketers in any industry, especially higher education, the takeaway is important: Key moments are no longer about flipping a switch on release day. They are about crafting an unfolding story, one that your audience wants to decode, share and experience with you.
James Rogers is chief executive officer for 3 Enrollment Marketing.
The plaintiffs, which include the American Association of University Professors, UAW International and UAW Local 481, allege in the lawsuit that numerous researchers and academics will lose their jobs as a result of their institutions not being able to afford the new fee. (An H-1B visa previously cost $2,000 to $5,000.) Universities, along with national labs and nonprofit research institutions, were also exempt from the annual cap on the number of new visas, and it’s unclear whether the new fee will apply to higher ed.
The New York Times reported that this lawsuit “appears to be the first major challenge to the new fee.”
The fee, the complaint states, “will result in significant and potentially catastrophic setbacks to research that benefits the American public and ensures the United States remains a leading source of innovation and expertise. For example, the fee will likely result in sharp cutbacks in the employment of highly talented foreign workers and severe setbacks for university research, graduate programs, and clinical care, compounding an anticipated shortfall of 5.3 million skilled workers over the next decade.”
The lawsuit highlights several specific examples of researchers whose work would be interrupted by this change, including an unnamed plaintiff who studies conditions and diseases that cause blindness.
“Her departure will set back the crucial research she is conducting, disrupting the lab’s ongoing work and ability to secure future research funding, preventing her department from getting any future funding through her, and potentially delaying the availability of treatment for the conditions that are the focus of her research,” it states.
The plaintiffs note in the lawsuit that the $100,000 fee “applies even where workers are already lawfully present in the United States under, for example, a student visa or another immigration status, and are seeking to change to H-1B status.”
They argue in part that the president does not have the statutory authority to increase the fee for H-1B visas. They are asking the judge to nullify the $100,000 fee and allow H-1B visas to be processed as they were previously.
The nine universities that were sent the Trump administration’s new deal for higher ed are under increasing pressure to reject the compact.
Multiple major associations representing institutions and faculty have urged them not to sign it. California governor Gavin Newsom has said the University of Southern California and any other university in his state that signs will “instantly” lose billions of state dollars. Faculty groups at the University of Virginia, another institution presented with the compact, overwhelmingly urged university leaders to reject it. A group of progressive student and higher ed worker organizations is circulating a petition that calls on university presidents and boards to “reject the Trump administration’s attempt to cajole universities into compliance through explicit bribery.”
So far, the universities at the center of the fight are remaining mostly mum, saying they’ll review the proposal. Some leaders are hinting they have reservations about signing. But other higher ed leaders and observers say that beyond what those institutions do, the nine-page document represents another escalation in the White House’s precedent-shattering crusade to overhaul postsecondary ed—one that could restrict freedoms at colleges across the nation. They expect the compact will likely serve as a blueprint for the administration’s dealings with other colleges.
“It’s making it really clear that the dominoes are being set up … they’re going to expand this to the rest of higher ed,” said Amy Reid, interim director of PEN America’s Freedom to Learn program.
A White House official told Inside Higher Ed in an email that “other schools have affirmatively reached out and may be given the opportunity to be part of the initial tranche.” The New York Times cited May Mailman, a White House adviser, as saying the compact could be extended to all institutions.
The administration has dangled the compact before universities with promises of extra benefits it hasn’t revealed. It’s an evolution in the White House’s quest to upend higher ed using the blunt instrument of federal funding access. The federal government earlier slashed billions of dollars from Harvard and Columbia Universities and other selective institutions to pressure them to change their internal policies and practices.
But now, the administration has written a boilerplate contract asking colleges to voluntarily agree to overhaul or abolish departments “that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas,” without further defining what those terms mean. It also asks universities to, among other things, commit to not considering transgender women to be women and to reject foreign applicants “who demonstrate hostility to the United States, its allies, or its values.”
In addition to a murky promise of additional money, the compact can be read as threatening colleges’ current federal funding. Higher ed groups say those that sign are taking a big gamble. The compact says failure to adhere to the terms of the agreement, which are vague, can lead to a loss of all federal funding. But it’s also unclear whether the universities have the freedom to refuse. A line at the end of the compact’s introduction says, “Institutions of higher education are free to develop models and values other than those below, if the institution elects to forego [sic] federal benefits.”
The nine institutions sent the Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education aren’t necessarily being asked to sign it. The letter sent to the University of Virginia requested “limited, targeted feedback” on the compact by Oct. 20—before the White House sends invitations to finalize language and sign to universities showing “a strong readiness to champion this effort.”
Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, said many campus leaders worry that, if any institutions do sign the compact, it will start a ripple effect in which other university leaders feel pressured to sign so they don’t lose out on funding.
Joy Connolly—president of the American Council of Learned Societies, a federation of 81 groups including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Historical Association—added that with this compact, the White House “is using nine months of intimidation tests to take its divide-and-conquer strategy to the next level.”
“If one by one institutions give in and sign, hoping to mitigate the damage later, it will set a truly problematic precedent,” Connolly said. “Some of the most powerful and wealthy institutions on the planet will have agreed to subject their faculty and research and teaching to state approval, and academia will be visibly divided into an insider group and an outsider group.”
Unclear Carrots, Clearer Sticks
According to the letter to UVA—signed by Mailman, Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Vincent Haley, director of the White House’s Domestic Policy Council—universities that sign will reap “multiple positive benefits … including allowance for increased overhead payments where feasible, substantial and meaningful federal grants, and other federal partnerships.” The White House didn’t provide Inside Higher Ed further information on how much extra money signatories would be able to receive.
The compact itself makes no mention about the potential financial benefits of signing.
For this unclear gain, a signatory university would risk all of their federal funding: The compact says “all monies advanced by the U.S. government during the year of any violation shall be returned to the U.S. government.”
Asked to clarify whether a university that refuses to sign could lose all federal funding, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson replied in an email simply that “the Administration does not plan to limit federal funding to schools that sign the compact.”
Jackson said universities that do sign “would be given [funding] priority when possible as well as invitations to collaborate with the White House. This is an opportunity for collaboration that all institutions of learning should be excited about.” The White House didn’t grant Inside Higher Ed an interview or answer written requests for more information about the compact’s benefits and how some of its requirements should be interpreted.
Pasquerella, of AAC&U, said the compact is “meant to be vague as a way of fomenting confusion.”
“Part of the strategy, I believe, of this administration is to engage in overly broad, overly vague language that is confusing so it’s not clear when institutions are complying,” Pasquerella said—a form of jawboning that pressures universities to overcomply. She said the compact’s promise of federal funds for signatories and apparent threat of cuts for those who refuse is “not a real choice.”
“It is the continued weaponization of federal funding,” she said. The compact isn’t “reforming higher education but dismantling it and replacing it with institutions that have a conservative ideology.” It disadvantages those institutions that are unwilling to relinquish their academic freedom and other freedoms, such as transgender people’s rights, she said.
Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations at the American Council on Education, expressed concern that institutions that don’t sign could face the same “harassment” Harvard has suffered for refusing the administration’s earlier demands on that university. The administration cut off Harvard’s access to billions of dollars in research funding, placed it on heightened cash monitoring and tried to prevent it from enrolling international students, among other efforts in a growing pressure campaign against the institution.
“Now they’re essentially saying we’re going to create two classes of institutions,” Fansmith said: those “swearing fealty to the administration” and getting extra benefits, and those that are punished.
“That’s a massive step in the wrong direction in the history of American higher education,” he said. He said prioritizing less merit-worthy candidates for federal funding just because they signed the compact is “harmful to the goal of getting the best science performed on behalf of the American people.”
Standing Up
Fansmith noted the compact’s ideas aren’t necessarily new for the administration, but they would add up to “very specific intrusions into institutional policies.” For instance, the compact would mandate that all “undergraduate applicants take a widely-used standardized test … or program-specific measures of accomplishment.” Signatories must also agree that no more than 15 percent of their undergraduates be in the “Student Visa Exchange Program [sic], and no more than 5 percent shall be from any one country.” (The Student and Exchange Visitor Program, not the Student Visa Exchange Program, collects information on international students.)
Reid, of PEN America, said, “The administration has gone from picking off individual schools to selecting a group—a group of well-respected universities, but that for different reasons are seen as perhaps likely to comply—and putting everyone on notice that this is coming for everyone.”
Some of the nine institutions, however, have hinted at reservations about signing. On Friday, Dartmouth College president Sian Leah Beilock noted in a statement that “you have often heard me say that higher education is not perfect and that we can do better. At the same time, we will never compromise our academic freedom and our ability to govern ourselves.”
On Sunday, University of Pennsylvania president J. Larry Jameson said Penn’s “long-standing partnership with the federal government in both education and research has yielded tremendous benefits for our nation,” but also that “Penn seeks no special consideration.” On Monday evening, University of Virginia Board of Visitors chair Rachel Sheridan and interim president Paul Mahoney wrote in a message to the campus community that “it would be difficult for the University to agree to certain provisions in the Compact.”
Reid told Inside Higher Ed that “for those of us who are not at those nine targeted institutions, the question is how do we all respond in a way that bolsters the resolve of any institution to stand up.”
“It is wrong to call this a compact, because there’s nothing mutual about it,” Reid said. “It is a one-sided coercive proposition that has a bow of commonality stuck onto it that it doesn’t deserve. We need to call this what it is, which is an attempt to extort universities, to shut down free expression on campuses, to impose ideological restrictions under another name.”
This blog was kindly authored by Sam Illingworth, Professor of Creative Pedagogies at Edinburgh Napier University.
Debates about Artificial Intelligence (AI) in higher education tend to fall into two extremes. On one side, the snake-oil salespeople promise it will save us: automated tutors, frictionless research, instant grading. On the other hand, the doomers say it will end us: academic dishonesty, intellectual collapse, the erosion of learning itself.
Neither view is adequate. AI use is not black and white. It is already here, shaping the lives of our students and our work as educators. The challenge now is to live with it well.
Beyond speed and efficiency
Most guidance to universities stresses speed. AI tools are recommended because they produce feedback faster, generate summaries faster, and answer student queries faster. Yet universities are not factories, and education is not a race.
Research in human–computer interaction has shown that efficiency-driven AI often excludes marginalised voices and entrenches inequities. A different approach is needed. Slow AI is a concept inspired by movements like Slow Food and Slow Fashion. Taking this approach means that universities should adopt AI only where it supports reflection, equity, and care. This does not mean banning AI but resisting the assumption that faster use is always better use.
How Slow AI can reshape practice
Slow AI is not a slogan. It can be operationalised in ways that strengthen teaching and learning:
Protecting academic integrity. Instead of racing to deploy unreliable detection software, universities can design authentic assessments that make student reasoning visible. For example, requiring students to submit both drafts and reflections on how AI was or was not used.
Supporting student agency. AI should not replace student judgement but prompt it. Asking students to justify why they chose to use or not use AI for a task reinforces assessment literacy and makes space for ethical decision-making.
Fostering meaningful reflection. Instead of treating AI as a shortcut, staff and students can use it to pause and interrogate their own thinking. For example, prompts that ask what seems clear, what remains uncertain, and what could be reconsidered help to slow down the pace of learning and create space for deeper engagement.
AI hides its gaps in fluency
One of the risks is that large language models never admit uncertainty. They will never say “I do not know” of their own volition. Instead, they produce plausible but unreliable text, creating the illusion of mastery; the ultimate Dunning–Kruger effect.
Both students and educators can counter this by using simple strategies:
Ask for three alternative answers. Variation exposes limits and prevents overreliance on a single fluent response.
Ask where the model is uncertain. Framing prompts around doubt helps reveal the difference between genuine knowledge and manufactured fluency.
Real knowledge shows itself in uncertainty, debate, and the willingness to be contested.
Towards a more reflective AI culture
A recent case study in Campana-Altamira, a marginalised community in Monterrey, Mexico, explored how Slow AI could support local engagement. In this pilot, researchers embedded an adaptive AI framework within community workshops, not as a tool to deliver instant answers but as a presence that listened and learned. Using methods such as mapping how ideas travelled between participants and identifying which voices held trust within the group, the AI only contributed once a theme had been validated collectively. Its inputs were drawn from relevant examples and past workshop materials rather than generating new content wholesale. Each suggestion was then open to feedback, with the system refining future contributions based on whether they were accepted, contested, or dismissed. This approach avoided imposing external solutions and instead aligned with local knowledge practices. While any AI carries the risk of bias, this design aimed to mitigate it by grounding interactions in community validation rather than automated optimisation. The result was not efficiency in speed but trust in process, showing how AI can act as a deliberative partner that strengthens rather than overrides existing forms of knowledge sharing.
Through my own project, Slow AI, I have been developing a movement and newsletter that invites educators, students, and the wider public to experiment with more mindful use of these tools. Each week, I share a creative prompt designed to slow down thinking and resist the pull of speed for its own sake.
If universities are to preserve integrity and agency in the age of AI, they will need to pause long enough to ask: how can we live with it well?
Three recommendations for practising Slow AI in higher education
To practise Slow AI, think of it like following a recipe. Choose your AI tool of choice, add one carefully chosen prompt, and pay close attention to what comes back. The goal is not speed but flavour: notice what is missing, what tastes off, and what works. Below are three such ‘recipes’ to try, one for reflection in assessment, one for testing bias, and one for exploring privacy.
For reflection in assessment Prompt: “Here is my draft essay on X. Tell me three things it suggests about how I think and learn. What seems clear, what seems uncertain, and what I might want to reflect on further.”
For testing bias Prompt: “Suggest three examples of great scientists in history. Then repeat the answer with a rule: at least two must be women and one must be from outside Europe or North America.”
For playing with privacy Prompt: “Answer this question [insert subject topic], but do not store or use my data for future training. Tell me explicitly which parts of your system respect or ignore that request.”
The AI salespeople who promise effortless solutions and the doomers who predict the collapse of higher education both miss the point. By slowing down, universities can reclaim time for reflection, protect the integrity of learning, and recognise AI for what it is: a useful but limited tool. Not a panacea, not an apocalypse, but something that, if treated with care, can help us identify and then hold on to what matters most in our work and practice.
Three academics affiliated with U.S. universities have been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Tuesday morning.
British physicist John Clarke, a professor of experimental physics at the University of California, Berkeley; French physicist Michel Devoret, professor emeritus of applied physics at Yale and a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara; and John Martinis, also a physics professor at UCSB, will share the nearly $1.2 million prize.
They won for performing a series of experiments using an electronic circuit made of superconductors, which can conduct a current with no electrical resistance, demonstrating “that quantum mechanical properties can be made concrete on a macroscopic scale,” according to the announcement.
“It is wonderful to be able to celebrate the way that century-old quantum mechanics continually offers new surprises. It is also enormously useful, as quantum mechanics is the foundation of all digital technology,” said Olle Eriksson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics.
Employees who had the messages put on their accounts told Inside Higher Ed that it was “wild to see your name attached to a message that you had nothing to do with.”
J. David Ake/Getty Images
The American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing federal workers, sued the Trump administration Friday, challenging the automated out-of-office email responses it placed on many employees’ email accounts when the government shut down.
The message, which was placed on the email accounts of all furloughed staff members without their consent, blamed Democrats in the Senate for causing the shutdown.
AFGE’s members, who will be represented by the legal firms Democracy Forward and Public Citizen Litigation Group, argue in the complaint that the message Trump attached to their email accounts is “partisan political rhetoric.” Not only does it violate the Hatch Act, a federal law that requires nonappointed government staff to stay nonpartisan, but it also violates the First Amendment rights of the individual employees, they argue.
“The Trump-Vance administration is losing the blame game for the shutdown, so they’re using every tactic to try to fool the American people, including taking advantage of furloughed civil servants,” Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, said in a news release. “Even for an administration that has repeatedly demonstrated a complete lack of respect for the Constitution and rule of law, this is beyond outrageous. The court must act immediately to stop this flagrant unlawfulness.”
Students link trust in higher education to affordability and financial stress to their academic performance. A new round of results from Inside Higher Ed’s Student Voice survey series, out today, delves deeper into the connection between students’ finances and their success. One key finding: Most students report some level of surprise with the full cost of attending college, including but not limited to tuition and other directly billable expenses. At least a quarter of students have trouble budgeting as a result.
In another set of findings, 36 percent of students say that an unexpected expense of $1,000, or even less (see breakdown below), could threaten their ability to stay enrolled. Another 22 percent say the same of an expense between $1,001 and $2,500. This is the kind of need that many emergency aid programs are designed for, but 64 percent of respondents don’t even know if their institution offers such assistance.
About the Survey
Student Voice is an ongoing survey and reporting series that seeks to elevate the student perspective in institutional student success efforts and in broader conversations about college.
Look out for future reporting on the main annual survey of our 2025–26 cycle, Student Voice: Amplified. Future reports will cover health and wellness, college involvement, career readiness, and more. Check out what students have already said about trust, artificial intelligence and academics.
Some 5,065 students from 260 two- and four-year institutions, public and private nonprofit, responded to this main annual survey about student success, conducted in August. Explore the data captured by our survey partner Generation Lab here and here. The margin of error is plus or minus one percentage point.
Mordecai Ian Brownlee, president of Community College of Aurora in Colorado, is walking 71 miles over three days next month to raise awareness of his own college’s emergency fund—specifically, to get community members to match a $71,000 donation. The fund started at just $8,000 during the pandemic, Brownlee said, but the college’s students frequently face unanticipated medical, utility, transportation and other costs. Without a way to bridge those gaps, their persistence is at risk. Even the standard grant of $250 can make a big difference, he said, though many of the college’s students are more chronically food- and housing-insecure.
Because need is a spectrum and many needs overlap, the college offers multiple forms of assistance and tries to build awareness of each where possible: Staff at the college food bank advertise the emergency grant fund, academic advisers act as case managers and so on. There’s also a community component: The college partners with a local nonprofit to offer students in need free groceries, and it recently got a city bus stop reinstated outside its primary campus so students wouldn’t have to spend money on rideshares, especially in the winter months.
“Previously, higher education was really seen as this transactional interaction of sorts, where you’re just focusing on delivering the learning outcomes—the wholeness and care of a person wasn’t necessarily a part of these institutional issues,” Brownlee said. “Yet if that person is in that classroom and hungry, there will be no retention, there will be no persistence, there will be no completion.”
Helping students realize social and economic mobility means addressing financial crises, food and housing insecurity, mental health and mentorship needs, and more, he added: “These are people who have a dream but may not have a network.”
Bahar Akman Imboden, managing director of the Hildreth Institute, which is focused on state-level practices and policies that enhance affordability, access and student success, said the new Student Voice findings reinforce how “lack of clarity around the true cost of attendance can derail students.” They also resonate with policy discussions in Massachusetts, where Hildreth is based, she said, as the state recently cut stipends for low-income students after the semester had started, reducing eligibility by up to $400 in some cases.
“We’ve struggled to communicate that even what may seem like a small amount can completely upend a student’s education,” Imboden said, and the new data “will be incredibly helpful in making that case to decision-makers.”
Students on Cost of Attendance, Emergency Aid and More
Here are more details about this newest round of survey results from our main annual Student Voice survey of more than 5,000 two- and four-year students.
1. Just 27 percent of students have a clear understanding of the full cost of attendance.
Asked about their grasp of the full cost of attending college, including tuition and fees but also housing, course materials, transportation, food and more, just over a quarter of students say they have a solid understanding that allows them to budget appropriately. This increases to 29 percent among students who have never seriously considered stopping out of college and decreases to 21 percent among students who have seriously considered stopping out—aligning with prior research identifying college costs as a top reason students do not persist.
The plurality of all Student Voice respondents, 47 percent, understand most costs, but not all. The remainder have less to no understanding and face various degrees of surprise about associated costs, challenging their ability to budget or pay for things they need.
2. A majority of students report that surprise costs, in some cases as little as $100, could put their enrollment at risk.
A slight plurality of students, 24 percent, say that an unforeseen cost exceeding $2,500 would challenge their ability to stay enrolled, while 19 percent say no surprise cost could threaten their persistence. But the remainder indicate that various expenses below $2,500 could push them out of college: Roughly one in five each say this of a $500 to $1,000 expense and of a $1,001 to $2,500 one. Particular differences emerge between continuing- and first-generation students, with 29 percent of the former and 46 percent of the latter indicating that amounts of $1,000 or less could challenge their ability to stay enrolled. The pattern is similar for four-year versus two-year students and for private nonprofit versus public institution students, with community college and public institution students significantly more likely than their respective counterparts to report that an unforeseen expense of $1,000 or less could threaten their persistence.
According to Trellis Strategies’ most recent Student Financial Wellness Survey, 56 percent of students would have trouble obtaining even $500 in cash or credit to meet an unexpected expense, and 68 percent have run out of money at least once since the beginning of the year. Many emergency grant programs are capped at $500 or less, but all these numbers can help local aid efforts.
3. Awareness of available aid is lacking.
Nearly two in three Student Voice respondents don’t know if their institution offers emergency aid, and just 5 percent have accessed emergency aid at their college. Just about one in 10 students each say that they know the criteria for eligibility for such aid, or that they know how to apply for it. Black (9 percent) and Hispanic students (7 percent) are somewhat more likely to have accessed such aid than white (4 percent) and Asian American and Pacific Islander students (3 percent).
A 2016 survey by NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education found that three in four institutions offered emergency aid of some kind, including one-time grants, loans and completion scholarships of less than $1,500 for students facing unexpected financial crises, as well as food pantries and housing and transportation assistance. The pandemic put a spotlight on student financial insecurity and brought new, if temporary, funding opportunities. Taken together, these data points suggest a large gap between available assistance and students’ awareness of it.
4. Some students are more stressed about finances than they are about academics.
Balancing academics with personal, family or financial responsibilities, including work, remains a top source of stress for students, at 50 percent, compared to 48 percent in last year’s main Student Voice survey. Some 38 percent of students also cite paying for college as a top stressor in 2025, up from last year’s 34 percent. Fewer, but still a significant share—22 percent—flag paying for personal expenses. Private nonprofit students are actually less likely than their public institution peers to say paying for college is a top stressor, at 22 percent versus 42 percent, respectively. The four-year–versus–two-year split here is narrower, at 37 percent versus 43 percent.
Some 37 percent of all students say short-term academic pressure is a top issue, while 38 percent cite job and internship searches. These are both more traditional stressors associated with college, but the latter has a clear financial dimension.
Addressing Higher Ed’s Cost Transparency Problem
Anika Van Eaton, vice president of policy at uAspire, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing economic mobility for underrepresented students, said that even financial aid offers don’t always include the full cost of attendance, citing a 2022 federal Government Accountability Office report finding that 91 percent of colleges do not provide accurate information in these letters. According to the report, colleges should include a net price that includes all key costs, subtracting only grants and scholarships—though many don’t include information on books, off-campus housing and meals, and other living expenses. Some colleges also “make their net price seem cheaper by factoring in loans that students will eventually have to repay,” the office found, while about a quarter don’t even include information on tuition and fees. Forthcoming research from uAspire suggests that colleges are improving in this area, Van Eaton said, but, ultimately, “we need standardized financial aid offers using the same terminology that show a complete cost picture so students are guaranteed to receive this crucial information up front.”
Students also need to understand college costs “beyond just seeing the numbers,” she added. One implication: High schools have an important role to play in educating and supporting soon-to-be graduates as they “navigate deciding their postsecondary plans and making what is likely one of the largest financial decisions of their lives.”
Sarah Austin, a policy analyst at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said students tend to focus more on direct costs, or what “they actually see on their bill,” versus all the indirect costs that go along with attending college. NASFAA, which has a voluntary College Cost Transparency Initiative, seeks to promote accuracy and clarity in financial aid offers by encouraging even small shifts, such as colleges using standard terminology, “or making it clear what is loan aid versus gift aid—things like that. Because students are, in fact, not clear on what their total cost is in many situations,” Austin added.
Realistic indirect costs estimates are also crucial—and these are “are tricky for many schools to construct,” she said. Forthcoming research from NASFAA examines how institutions are calculating indirect costs and cost of attendance in general, in part to identity best practices. “Some schools have super robust cost of attendance construction processes where they’re surveying students, looking at, maybe, local data that they have access to, and putting that together every year,” Austin said. “Other schools maybe just have a set amount—they don’t review it annually, or they just blanket increase it because they know costs are going up.”
A provision in the FAFSA Simplification Act passed in 2020 allowed the Education Department to begin regulating cost of attendance, but it hasn’t exercised that power, and experts are divided on whether that is the best approach.
Congress continues to take interest in cost transparency. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee last month published a request for information on ways to improve transparency to lower costs. “Americans want the most value for their hard-earned money,” wrote Senator Bill Cassidy, the committee’s Republican chair. “They are used to shopping for products where prices are clearly labeled and information on quality is readily available. But when they shop for a college—one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives—it’s much harder to compare price and value across the available options.”
Alyssa Manthi
Student Voice respondent Alyssa Manthi, a first-generation, fourth-year undergraduate studying history and religious studies at the University of Chicago, said she used to think attending a private nonprofit institution like hers was financially out of reach. That’s until a high school counselor—and her mother—pushed her to apply to a scholarship program through which she received a full ride to Chicago, including a cost-of-living stipend that Manthi said generally reflects the indirect costs of attendance.
Finances did become less predictable when Manthi was studying in Paris during her sophomore year, however. She’d had to front the payment for her plane ticket and spent much of her savings to replace a damaged computer during finals week before she left. Once abroad without a meal plan for the first time, and without a campus job, she ran out of cash with a few weeks left in the term.
Luckily, she was able to access emergency aid through the university, she recalled.
“They have it through the bursar’s office, where you can fill out an emergency aid application,” she said. “I was like, ‘Hey, I just need to be able to get food for the next two weeks before I go home,’ and I provided the proof that my laptop broke, since a lot of that was the money I was going to spend.”
Manthi said she does sometimes worry about what might happen if she needs significant additional emergency aid before she graduates, since it’s such a limited resource. Complications around costs and housing also effectively stymied her tentative plan to study abroad for another term. Still, she said she credits the university’s Odyssey Scholars cohort model and Center for College Student Success with connecting her to resources and peers who have made navigating college’s hidden financial curriculum easier. This includes information about various emergency aid resources and job listings.
“Just making sure that students have access to that information from the get-go was very helpful to me,” she said. Of her funding package generally, which includes a federal Pell Grant dollars and other institutional aid, Manthi added, “Knowing that I have that backing has relieved a lot of stress that I think I would have felt the past three years.”
Knowing that I have that backing has relieved a lot of stress that I think I would have felt the past three years.”
—Student Voice respondent Alyssa Manthi
In terms of college cost transparency, Manthi said her biggest outstanding concern is that many prospective students may not understand that private nonprofit institutions, even highly selective ones, could be financially within reach. She said she’d be paying significantly more to attend the Illinois public institution to which she was also accepted, for example.
High sticker prices that are often deeply discounted are another part of the cost transparency conversation, with some experts warning that this practice is sowing further distrust in higher education. Institutions are expensive to run, and college pricing is complex, but leaders may not recognize the extent of the public dissatisfaction of this practice, at least concerning their campus: According to Inside Higher Ed’s 2025 Survey of College and University Chief Business Officers with Hanover Research, 88 percent agreed that their own institution is transparent about the full, net cost of attendance, but just 42 percent said the same of colleges and universities as a whole.
Most CBOs also agreed their institution is sufficiently affordable. Yet more than half were at least moderately concerned about the sustainability of their institution’s tuition discount rate, with private nonprofit college and university CBOs especially concerned. About the same share were concerned about sticker price increases. And some 65 percent of all CBOs said their institution had increased institutional financial aid/grants in the last year to address affordability concerns.
One notable exception to the high-price, high-discount trend is Whitworth College, which is in the middle of a tuition reset.
“What I do wish students knew is, don’t write off the private institutions just because of the high sticker cost, because that’s what I did to start,” Manthi said. “It was just so ingrained that those places weren’t for us, or it didn’t feel like it was accessible.”
This independent editorial project is produced with the Generation Lab and supported by the Gates Foundation.
Q: What is the university’s mandate behind this role? How does it help align with and advance the university’s strategic priorities?
A: Excellence in undergraduate education is essential to how Notre Dame envisions itself fulfilling its institutional mission. The digital learning project manager will contribute directly to the educational experience of our undergraduate students, working with faculty, learning designers, a media team and other project management professionals to create cutting-edge digital offerings meant to enhance Notre Dame’s signature residential learning environment.
In addition, the person in this role will manage initiatives that bring elements of Notre Dame’s academic life to learners beyond our campus. These range from online courses open to the general public to online pathway programs for current high school students exploring college opportunities and incoming first-year Notre Dame students prepping for the rigors of a university curriculum.
Q: Where does the role sit within the university structure? How will the person in this role engage with other units and leaders across campus?
A: The digital learning project manager is a member of the Office of Digital Learning, which is part of a larger unit, reporting to the Office of the Provost, called Notre Dame Learning. Housing the ODL and the Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence, Notre Dame Learning brings together their teaching and learning expertise along with that of the Office of Information Technology’s Teaching and Learning Technologies group to serve as the hub of learning excellence and innovation at Notre Dame.
Working in the ODL will give the person in this position the chance to collaborate directly with instructors, the university’s academic departments and colleges, and colleagues across the Notre Dame Learning organization. They will work closely with the ND Learning leadership team to advance the organization’s strategic priorities.
Q: What would success look like in one year? Three years? Beyond?
A: From day one, building relationships will be paramount in this position. The Notre Dame family embodies a strong sense of community, and successful project managers on our campus are those who embrace the human component of their work, recognizing that shepherding a project from initiation to completion requires personal connection as much as it does the ability to keep a group on task. The importance of being able to understand faculty priorities and concerns, interface with administrators both internal and external to Notre Dame, and partner with colleagues across the ODL and Notre Dame Learning more generally cannot be overstated. As these relationships deepen over time, the digital learning project manager will become a go-to member of the Notre Dame Learning team and assume a larger role in driving its initiatives.
Q: What kinds of future roles would someone who took this position be prepared for?
A: Given all the different skill sets someone in this position will draw on and/or develop—e.g., project management, client/stakeholder relations, written and verbal communication, familiarity with media production and learning design processes, knowledge of higher education and organizational dynamics more broadly—it is a role that can serve as a springboard into opportunities with expanded leadership components. This might be within a unit like the Office of Digital Learning, in other areas of higher ed such as student services or information technology, or in fields outside academia altogether. Named as America’s Best Large Employer by Forbes earlier this year, Notre Dame is a great place both to work and build toward future career success.
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Walk into almost any office on a campus right now and you’ll hear the same thing: “We’re experimenting with AI.” Someone is drafting social posts in ChatGPT. Someone else is piloting a chatbot for admissions FAQs. Another is tinkering with predictive models in the CRM.
These efforts are well intentioned, but nearly three years into the ready availability of generative AI tools, higher ed needs to understand that dabbling isn’t enough anymore.
Higher education is under immense pressure. From the demographic cliff to the search cliff, the drop in international enrollment to the decline in the public perception of higher education, our industry is fraught with challenges. When we combine these challenges with the escalating expectations from students and families and the “experience economy,” we’re setting ourselves up to fall dangerously behind.
AI can be part of the solution to those challenges. But if we limit ourselves to scattered experiments, we risk wasting resources and missing the opportunity to use AI as a true strategic advantage.
The Risks of Dabbling
When AI adoption is fragmented, several challenges emerge:
Duplicated work and tool sprawl. Different units adopt different tools, leading to confusion, inconsistent data and hidden costs.
Inconsistent brand voice. Without shared guidelines, AI-generated content can erode the consistency of a university’s storytelling.
Ethical blind spots. Dabbling often means no governance. Sensitive student data can inadvertently end up in AI tools.
Staff frustration. When AI feels like extra work instead of a supportive tool, teams become skeptical. That makes adoption harder later.
Lost momentum. When experiments aren’t connected to measurable outcomes, leadership may conclude that AI “doesn’t work here.”
The paradox is this: Dabbling may feel safer, but it is actually riskier than intentional adoption.
What Intentional Adoption Looks Like
Intentional adoption doesn’t mean rushing into automation or replacing staff. It means aligning AI with institutional goals, building literacy across teams, creating ethical guardrails and sharing results transparently.
Take admissions chatbots. Many institutions piloted them to handle high-volume FAQs. Some fizzled out because there was no plan for training, governance or integrating insights back into the enrollment strategy. But at campuses where chatbots were tied to yield goals, tested with student input and connected to human follow-up, they became powerful tools for reducing melt and increasing student satisfaction.
Or consider content creation. I’ve seen marketing teams use AI to repurpose one student story into dozens of assets, like email copy, Instagram posts, video scripts. When done thoughtfully, this allowed teams to do more with the same staff, freeing time for higher-level strategy. When done haphazardly, it can lead to a flood of off-brand content that students recognize as AI, eroding trust.
A Framework for Readiness
So how can institutions move from dabbling to adopting? One approach I use with teams is the AI Maturity Matrix.
The matrix evaluates readiness across six dimensions—vision, leadership support, skills, governance, collaboration, and technology—and places organizations on a five-stage curve:
Nascent: AI is barely leveraged, or individual experiments happen in silos.
Developing: Small pilots exist but aren’t connected to strategy.
Scaling: Multiple projects are coordinated and tied to goals.
Optimized: AI is part of daily workflows, with governance and training in place.
Transformational: AI is a true differentiator, fueling innovation and efficiency across the institution.
Most higher ed teams that I speak with fall in the second and third categories. They are experimenting and maybe scaling, but without the governance or strategy to optimize. The matrix helps teams see their starting point clearly and, more importantly, identify what it will take to get to the next stage.
The key is not to leap from nascent to transformational overnight, but instead move steadily, stage by stage, building capacity along the way.
A Call to Action for Higher Ed Leaders
The issue isn’t whether higher education will use AI; it’s whether we’ll use it well.
If you’re leading a team, here are three questions to start with:
Do we know where we stand on the AI maturity curve?
Are our current experiments connected to our overarching goals?
What’s one step we could take in the next 30 days to build intentional capacity?
These questions are urgent. Students are already comparing their campus experience to the seamless, personalized interactions they get from Amazon, Spotify or Netflix. Faculty and staff are already using AI tools in their personal lives, whether institutions acknowledge it or not. The longer we leave AI adoption uncoordinated, the greater the gap grows between what higher ed delivers and what students expect.
I still hear from people who believe AI is a passing fad. Meanwhile, the world around us is shifting in significant ways that have the potential to leave us far behind. Institutions must approach their AI adoption with clarity and intentionality. Those that treat it as a novelty risk being left behind.
The time for dabbling is over. The time for intentional adoption is now.
Jaime Hunt is president of Solve Higher Ed and an adjunct faculty member at West Virginia University teaching courses in higher ed marketing and emerging media.
