Driving Toward a Degree 2026: Student Supports Reinvented for ROI and AI
October 5, 2026 PapersNecessity Drives Reinvention: Higher Ed Turns to AI and Career Readiness to Prove Its Value Tyton Partners, with…
Necessity Drives Reinvention: Higher Ed Turns to AI and Career Readiness to Prove Its Value
Tyton Partners, with support from anchor partners Lumina Foundation and Riipen and research insight partners the Association for Undergraduate Education at Research Universities (UERU), NACADA, PeopleGrove, and Stellic, has released Driving Toward a Degree 2026: Student Supports Reinvented for ROI and AI. Ten years after its first publication, the latest report in Tyton Partners’ annual series examines how student support functions are responding to flat budgets, record caseloads, and mounting pressure to prove the return on a degree.
The research draws on responses from more than 1,200 administrators, advisors, and frontline support staff at 750+ U.S. colleges and universities, fielded in May-July 2026. It captures a sector where necessity is driving change: advisors are not waiting for a perfect solution, and institutions must now decide how to turn early, scattered experimentation into something built to last.
Driving Toward a Degree 2026 looks at how career readiness has become the clearest link to a degree’s ROI, and how AI-augmented human support can protect the limited time advisors spend with students. It underscores the need for institutions and solution providers to build the foundation that makes AI work: clear policy, a student voice in setting policy, role-specific training, and data that stakeholders trust.
Key insights from the report include:
- Caseloads remain the top barrier, and budgets are not growing: High caseloads have ranked as the top barrier to improving advising for six consecutive years (40% in 2026), with limited budget rising to second (34%). Four-year public advisors carry 339 students on average, up from 297 in 2024, and 35% of four-year publics expect their support budget to shrink.
- Career readiness is the clearest link to ROI, but effort is misaligned: Among administrators and staff who believe their institution is worth the cost, 96% also believe it prepares students for jobs. Yet institutions concentrate on lower-impact practices: job fairs are offered by 84% of institutions but rated among the most impactful by just 23%. Only about 5% of institutions today have a centralized strategy with respect to employer partnerships.
- Advisors are reaching for AI out of necessity: About one in five advisors (21%) now use AI daily, and they are the most strained (59% find their caseload unmanageable, vs. 46% of peers). Seven in ten staff say they would adopt an AI tool that improves student outcomes even if it changed their practices, and preference for a blended human and AI model rose to 42% from 32% in 2025.
- AI-backed functionality institutions already own may be sitting idle: Across six core student success technologies (e.g., CRM, SIS, student portal), 58% to 76% of respondents do not know whether their systems have built-in AI capabilities, and active use ranges only from 2% to 7%.
(Please download and open the report in Adobe Acrobat for the best user experience)