New Data Era In Higher Ed: Helping Colleges Connect With Students Like Never Before

Higher education is at a crossroads. Institutions’ massive pivot to online education delivery in 2020 exposed major flaws in their collective ability to provide a high quality and consistent learning experience. They felt the detriment of siloed data approaches and the resulting lack of a holistic view of each student to help support their multidimensional needs.

This was particularly pronounced with community college students — many of whom struggle to meet basic needs — and overall, colleges saw a 2.5% decline in enrollment last fall. The pandemic also exposed the underlying challenge many institutions have with understanding and communicating the investment value of higher education experiences to both near-term and long-term career prospects.

Despite these issues, there is a major silver lining: strong student loyalty to institutions nationwide. Based on data from our recent Pandemic College Student Experience Survey — which examined student sentiments as they relate to academic and co-curricular experiences during the pandemic — 9 out of 10 students were likely to reenroll at their same college.