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09/08/2026

Just the Facts: A new MDRC study follows CUNY Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) participants for 14 years, examining whether the program’s strong completion effects translated into lasting earnings gains.

The results confirm that ASAP’s completion impact endured well beyond the program itself. Its effect on economic mobility was less clear. Additional insights include:

🔶 Fourteen years after entering the study, 57.7% of students offered ASAP had earned a degree, compared with 50.0% of those receiving standard services. The statistically significant 7.7 percentage-point difference suggests that ASAP helped some students earn degrees they may not otherwise have completed.

🔶 After three years, 39.5% of ASAP students had graduated, compared with 22.4% of the control group. This 17.1 percentage-point impact was the largest recorded across more than 30 higher education randomized controlled trials conducted by MDRC since 2003, excluding other ASAP replications.

🔶 The program did not produce a statistically discernible increase in earnings within New York State. During the final two years studied, ASAP participants earned approximately $36,000 annually, compared with $38,000 among the control group. The study could not reliably detect the modest gains that might result from increased completion alone.

🔶 Most of ASAP’s additional degrees were earned in fields associated with relatively lower earnings among CUNY graduates. An Ohio replication that also increased bachelor’s degree attainment produced earnings gains of 12% after six years and 14% after eight years, suggesting that credential pathways and local labor markets may influence long-term outcomes.

The findings strengthen the case for comprehensive student support while showing why graduation rates alone offer an incomplete picture of economic mobility.

Institutions adopting similar models should examine program mix, transfer pathways, career preparation, employer connections, and local labor markets alongside completion. Helping more students graduate remains essential. The larger challenge is ensuring that their credentials also create meaningful educational and economic opportunities.

09/04/2026

Just the Facts: Common App’s 2025-26 End-of-Season Report examines first-year application trends across its member institutions.

The report provides a useful read on the undergraduate admissions market. Application activity is still growing, but the growth is uneven across student segments, institution types, and geographies. For enrollment leaders, the headline is not simply that more applications are being submitted. It is that students are applying more broadly, while institutions face greater uncertainty about yield and applicant intent. Additional insights include:

🔶 In the 2025-26 cycle, 1.53 million students submitted at least one first-year application through Common App, which served 1,146 institutions. Total application volume reached approximately 10.8 million applications, a 6% increase from the previous cycle.

🔶 Applications grew faster than applicants. Students applied to an average of 7.06 institutions, up from 6.79 last year. This suggests that more application volume does not necessarily mean stronger commitment to any one institution.

🔶 Access-related growth remained important. Reporting on the Common App data notes continued growth among applicants from low-income households and first-generation applicants, with applications from those groups increasing 8% and 6%, respectively.

🔶 International demand showed clear pressure. International applicants declined by 10%, with the most pronounced drops coming from Asia and Africa. At the same time, test-score reporting increased, with applicants reporting standardized test scores rising 11% while non-reporters declined 5%.

For colleges and universities, the admissions funnel is becoming larger, but not necessarily clearer. More applications can create the appearance of stronger demand while also making it harder to predict enrollment behavior.

That puts more weight on yield strategy, financial aid timing, student communication, and early signals of fit. Institutions need to understand which applicants are truly considering them, which students are applying more broadly to manage uncertainty, and where international or access-related trends may change the shape of the class.

09/03/2026

Just the Facts: Higher Ed Dive’s article examines a sharp shift in the higher education workforce.

Based on new CUPA-HR data, the article shows that colleges and universities reduced staff headcounts significantly in 2025, while faculty headcounts continued to grow. The pattern points to a changing workforce model, where institutions are making difficult staffing decisions while still investing selectively in academic capacity. Additional insights include:

🔶 Full-time staff headcount fell 6.6% in 2025, ending several years of growth. CUPA-HR notes that this decline was much larger than the staff losses seen during the pandemic years.

🔶 Part-time staff saw an even sharper reversal. Their headcount dropped 23.9% in 2025, after growing 21.1% in 2024. This points to the greater volatility of part-time roles when institutions face budget and operating pressure.

🔶 Faculty headcounts moved in the opposite direction. Tenure-track faculty increased 7.0% year over year, the largest single-year increase for that group since at least 2016. Non-tenure-track faculty also grew by 2.1%, while adjunct faculty rose 0.9%.

🔶 The tenure-track increase comes after a much longer shift toward contingent academic labor. Higher Ed Dive notes that between 1987 and 2023, the share of faculty in full-time tenured or tenure-track roles fell from 53% to 32%, while contingent faculty rose from 47% to 68%.

The workforce picture is more complicated than a simple story of cuts. Institutions reduced staff capacity substantially, especially in part-time roles, while adding tenure-track faculty at a rate not seen in years.

That raises a strategic question for leadership teams. Staff reductions may help close near-term budget gaps, but they can also affect advising, financial aid, registrar operations, facilities, student services, technology, and the day-to-day systems that keep campuses running.

Workforce planning now has to account for more than total headcount. It has to consider where capacity is being removed, where it is being added, and whether the resulting structure can still support students, faculty, and institutional strategy.

09/01/2026

Just the Facts: Pew Research Center’s latest analysis shows that young adults in the U.S. are becoming increasingly wary of artificial intelligence.

Based on a nationally representative survey of 3,488 U.S. adults conducted in June 2026, the findings show that concern about AI is rising across age groups, especially among adults under 30. For colleges and universities, this matters because students expected to adapt to an AI-enabled labor market are also increasingly concerned about what AI may mean for work and opportunity. Additional insights include:

🔶 Fifty-two percent of U.S. adults now say they are more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life, up from 37% in 2021. Only 9% say they are more excited than concerned.

🔶 Concern has grown sharply among young adults. For the first time, a majority of adults under 30, 55%, say they are more concerned than excited about AI. In 2021, that figure was 31%.

🔶 Worry about job loss is now widespread. Seventy-one percent of U.S. adults think AI will lead to fewer jobs in the United States over the next 20 years, up from 64% in 2024. Only 5% believe AI will lead to more jobs.

🔶 Young adults now share that concern at nearly the same rate as older working-age adults. Seventy-three percent of adults ages 18 to 29 say AI will lead to fewer jobs, up from 61% in 2024.

Students are being told that AI fluency will be essential, but many are also worried that AI will narrow the opportunities they are preparing for. Institutions will need to help students understand where AI may change work, where human judgment remains valuable, and how to build skills that can travel across roles.

As student concern about AI grows, how clearly can colleges explain not only how to use AI, but how to stay employable in a world shaped by it?

08/28/2026

Just the Facts: Ellucian’s 2026 Student Voice Report examines how current and prospective students are evaluating institutional relevance in higher education.

Based on a national survey of 2,001 U.S. learners, the report shows that students are making enrollment decisions through a more practical lens. They're looking at whether college fits their work lives, whether costs are clear, and whether programs connect to careers. Additional insights include:

🔶 The working learner is no longer a small segment of the market. 56% of current college students are employed full time. That figure rises to 62% for first-generation students, 71% for HBCU students, and 72% for MSI students.

🔶 Financial pressure is shaping both persistence and well-being. 58% of students reported having to choose between paying for college and basic needs such as food or housing. Ninety percent said financial stress affects their mental health, with 42% saying it affects them “very much” or “quite a bit.”

🔶 Financial aid speed and clarity now affect enrollment decisions. 22% of high school students said they would wait only two weeks for a financial aid offer before making an enrollment decision elsewhere. Nearly half of respondents, 49%, said $5,000 or less in additional aid could have changed where they enrolled.

🔶 Students want stronger connections between academics and careers. 74% of learners want degree plans to include career pathways and salary outcomes, but only 4% said their institution currently provides this information. Separately, 71% of students are interested in alternative or stackable credentials, while only 3% currently participate in them.

The report points to a shift in how students judge whether an institution is worth choosing. Reputation still matters, but students are also asking more immediate questions about flexibility, affordability, career outcomes, and future learning options.

Institutions need to make the student experience easier to navigate before enrollment, during enrollment, and after completion. Clearer aid communication, working-learner support, program-level career data, and credit for prior learning are no longer peripheral issues.

08/27/2026

Just the Facts: Digital Education Council’s AI in Higher Education Global Survey 2026 examines how students and faculty are experiencing AI across higher education systems globally.

Based on 45,398 responses, including 27,284 students and 18,114 faculty across 35 countries, the report provides one of the largest global datasets on AI adoption in higher education. The findings show that AI is already present across higher education, but its academic value, governance, and connection to future work remain uneven. Additional insights include:

🔶 AI is entering the classroom, but integration remains inconsistent. Only 15% of students say AI is integrated into many of their courses, while 43% say it appears in a few courses and another 43% say they have not experienced AI integration in their courses at all.

🔶 Where AI is used in courses, students report mixed learning value. Among students who have experienced AI integration, only 5% say it has transformed how they learn. Another 28% say it enhances their understanding and learning outcomes, while 42% say it has been only somewhat helpful and 24% say it has brought no clear learning value.

🔶 Students are questioning whether faculty are prepared to guide AI use. Globally, only 29% of students believe their instructors are well equipped to guide them on AI. In the U.S. and Canada, that figure falls to 17%, even though 64% of faculty report participating in AI literacy training.

🔶 Assessment and academic integrity are emerging as related challenges. Only 28% of students feel that most or many of their assessments reflect the work, skills, and judgment they expect to need in an AI-enabled workplace. At the same time, 60% of students globally worry that classmates may misuse AI for unfair advantage, rising to 73% in the U.S. and Canada.

For institutions, the work now sits across curriculum, faculty development, assessment design, academic integrity, and career preparation. If those pieces move separately, AI may become more visible on campus without becoming more useful to students.

08/25/2026

Just the Facts: Sallie and Ipsos’s How America Pays for College 2026 examines how undergraduate students and families are financing higher education.

Based on online interviews with 1,000 undergraduate students and 1,000 parents of undergraduate students, the report shows a familiar tension. Families continue to see higher education as valuable, but cost is shaping where students apply, where they enroll, and how families assemble the funds to pay. Additional insights include:

🔶 Families reported spending an average of $34,019 on college during the 2025-26 academic year, up from $30,837 the previous year. At the same time, 52% of families said they paid less than the full advertised sticker price.

🔶 Families are using a mix of resources to cover costs. Income and savings covered 49% of college costs, followed by scholarships and grants at 27%, parent and student borrowing at 22%, and contributions or gifts from family and friends at 2%.

🔶 College value remains strong in family decision-making. Ninety-one percent of families view higher education as a valuable investment, 84% are confident they made the right financial decisions to pay for it, and 89% reported confidence in their school choice.

🔶 Cost is still narrowing the choice set. Nearly eight in 10 families, 79%, said they eliminated a school based on cost during the decision-making process. Families weighed price, proximity to home, and academics almost evenly when choosing a school.

🔶 Planning and aid awareness remain uneven. Fifty-eight percent of families created a plan to pay for all years of college before enrolling. While 74% completed the FAFSA and 81% of those families found the process easy, only 25% knew the FAFSA opens in October. Among families who did not use scholarships, nearly three out of four did not apply at all.

The data points to a practical enrollment challenge. Families are not walking away from the idea of college, but they are making sharper financial decisions earlier in the process.

08/21/2026

Just the Facts: NACE’s article, Nearly Half of 2026 Grads Had a Job Offer Before Graduation Day, examines early employment outcomes for the Class of 2026.

Based on NACE’s 2026 Student Survey, conducted from March 12 to May 15 with more than 17,000 students across 258 colleges and universities, the findings show a job market that is active, but more restrained than the post-pandemic hiring surge. Additional insights include:

🔶 More than two in five 2026 bachelor’s degree graduates, 44%, had at least one job offer before graduation. Across the graduating senior respondents, students averaged 0.79 job offers before completing their degree.

🔶 The 2026 results are similar to the Class of 2025, but remain below the pace seen in 2022 and 2023, when graduates benefited from the stronger post-pandemic hiring rebound.

🔶 Graduating seniors remain cautiously optimistic. Overall, 56% said they were optimistic about their job prospects after graduation, even as early offer activity has not returned to the levels seen in the immediate post-pandemic period.

🔶 Paid internships continue to matter. Among students who participated in a paid internship and applied for a job, 55% received at least one offer. Paid interns with job offers also reported a higher average starting salary, $69,521, compared with $61,747 overall.

The findings reinforce the role of career preparation as a core part of the student value proposition. Internships, applied experience, skill translation, and employer engagement are not add-ons to the academic experience. They increasingly shape whether students can turn a degree into an offer before graduation.

For institutions, the work begins earlier than the senior year. Students need help connecting classroom work, campus employment, part-time jobs, internships, and extracurricular experiences to the skills employers are evaluating.

08/20/2026

Just the Facts: Gallup and Lumina Foundation’s latest State of Higher Education Study examines how currently enrolled college students view the decisions made by campus leaders and government policymakers.

Based on 3,801 responses from associate and bachelor’s degree students, the findings show that students are more positive about their own college leadership than the broader public narrative around higher education might suggest. At the same time, a meaningful share of students still express reservations about whether institutions consistently act in their best interests. Additional insights include:

🔶 Fifty-five percent of college students say their institution’s leadership acts in students’ best interests all or most of the time. Another 35% say leadership does so some of the time, while 11% say rarely or never.

🔶 Student trust does not follow the same partisan pattern seen in the broader public. Among current students, 62% of Republicans say their institution’s leadership usually acts in students’ best interests, compared with 55% of Democrats and 50% of independents.

🔶 Government policy is also shaping the student experience. Nearly six in 10 students say their campus has been changed a great deal or a moderate amount by state or federal policies. Among students at top-100 national universities, that share rises to nearly seven in 10.

🔶 Students rate campus leadership more favorably than government policymakers. Nearly eight in 10 students approve of policies and proposals implemented by their college leadership, compared with 56% approval for state policies and 45% approval for federal policies among students who say those policies have affected their campus.

The findings offer a useful counterweight to the broader decline in public confidence in higher education. Students are not uniformly skeptical of their institutions. Many still believe their campus leaders are making decisions with students in mind.

For institutional leaders, rebuilding confidence starts close to home. Clear decisions, visible student input, transparent communication, and follow-through on student-facing commitments may matter more than broad reputation campaigns.

08/18/2026

Just the Facts: Strada Education Foundation’s article, Beyond the Average: The Uneven Geography of College ROI, examines why the financial return on a bachelor’s degree varies so widely across states, regions, and demographic groups.

The article argues that average earnings and median income do not fully answer the question students and families are asking. A more useful measure is the likelihood that a degree will pay off for a specific student, in a specific place, in a specific labor market. Additional insights include:

🔶 Nationally, 69% of recent bachelor’s degree graduates see a positive 10-year return on investment. But the state-level range is wide, from 56% in Vermont to 82% in Washington, D.C. New York, California, Alaska, and Illinois are also among the states where graduates are most likely to see a positive ROI.

🔶 Geography is a major driver of outcomes. Bachelor’s degree holders in states with larger metropolitan concentrations are more likely to out-earn high school graduates in the same state. In Washington, D.C., 90% of bachelor’s degree holders earn more than their peers with a high school diploma. In Wyoming, the figure is below 70%.

🔶 The college earnings premium has weakened in many places. Between 2013 and 2023, the share of bachelor’s degree holders earning more than the high school median in their state declined in 37 states.

🔶 ROI also varies by race, ethnicity, and s*x. Compared with White and Asian peers of the same age and in the same state, Black and Hispanic college graduates are 5 to 10 percentage points less likely to out-earn the median high school completer. Female bachelor’s degree graduates of every race and ethnicity are also less likely than male graduates to do so.

The value of a bachelor’s degree remains real for most graduates. But this analysis makes it harder to talk about ROI as one national average.

That puts new pressure on institutions to understand graduate outcomes beyond aggregate salary data. Program-level outcomes, regional labor-market alignment, internship access, alumni location, employer relationships, and student support all shape whether a degree translates into economic mobility.

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