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Stevens Strategy, 12 Island View, PO Box 72, Grantham, NH (2026)

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.

08/17/2026

Stevens Strategy is pleased to congratulate Elizabeth Marsch on her appointment as Executive Director of Online Education at Manchester University.

This appointment marks an important step in Manchester University’s continued work to expand online learning, strengthen digital education, and build learner-centered programs that reflect the University’s mission and values.

Stevens Strategy was proud to support Manchester University in this search, helping identify candidates with the mix of online education experience, operational leadership, academic judgment, and mission alignment needed for the role.

Elizabeth brings more than 25 years of experience in higher education, with a strong record of building digital learning capacity across complex academic environments. Most recently, she served as Director of Distance Education at The Ohio State University, where her work included:

🔶 Supporting distance education and technology-enabled teaching across 38 departments and 20+ centers

🔶 Working with more than 1,500 faculty members to advance online and digitally enabled learning

🔶 Helping scale a distance education operation from 1 to 12 team members within four years

🔶 Supporting the development of 800+ quality-assured online courses

🔶 Advancing thoughtful, pedagogy-led AI integration, including the development of AI resources reaching 40,000+ unique visitors

🔶 Leading work across learning technologies, LMS optimization, accessibility, AI simulators, AI tutors, and operational dashboards

We are grateful to President Stacy Young and the Manchester University team for the opportunity to support this process, and we look forward to seeing Elizabeth’s leadership contribute to Manchester’s continued growth in online learning.

Congratulations, Elizabeth!

08/14/2026

Just the Facts: Ithaka S+R’s report, Part Time, Full Potential, examines how colleges, systems, and policymakers can improve outcomes for part-time learners.

The report argues that part-time students are not a marginal population. They represent about one-quarter of undergraduate students at four-year institutions and nearly two-thirds at two-year institutions, but complete credentials at roughly half the rate of full-time peers. Additional insights include:

🔶 Part-time enrollment is often shaped by constraint, not lack of commitment. The report identifies five characteristics that consistently differentiate part-time students from full-time peers: they are more likely to work full time, be adult learners, attend public two-year institutions, enroll exclusively online, and be parents.

🔶 The completion gap is substantial. Among students who began college in 2011-12, 65% of those who started part time returned the following year, compared with 86% of students who started full time. Across entering cohorts from 2008 to 2019, six-year completion rates for students who started part time ranged from 30% to 34%, compared with 60% to 68% for full-time starters.

🔶 The systems around students are still largely built for full-time attendance. Course schedules often prioritize traditional daytime patterns, support services are frequently offered during standard business hours, and 74% of institutions continue to schedule courses term by term, limiting students’ ability to plan around work and caregiving responsibilities.

🔶 Financial aid and credit policies are not well aligned with part-time students’ realities. Aid is often prorated by enrollment intensity, even though costs like housing, transportation, and dependent care do not fall proportionally. At the same time, only 11% of students use credit for prior learning despite its availability at 82% of institutions.

Part-time learners expose a structural mismatch in how many institutions are designed. Their barriers are often predictable: course timing, advising availability, aid eligibility, transfer rules, prior learning credit, and support services that assume students can organize life around college.

08/13/2026

Just the Facts: AAUP’s Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2025-26 examines faculty compensation, administrator pay, part-time faculty pay, benefits, and the structure of the academic workforce.

The report’s central finding is straightforward. Faculty salaries rose in nominal terms, but not enough to keep pace with inflation. For colleges and universities, the data points to a wider workforce challenge involving purchasing power, compensation equity, contingent labor, and the growing gap between faculty and administrator pay. Additional insights include:

🔶 Average salaries for full-time faculty increased 2.3% from fall 2024 to fall 2025. Over the same period, the CPI-U increased 2.7%, resulting in a real salary decline of about 0.4%. For continuing full-time faculty, salaries rose 3.4% in nominal terms and 0.7% in real terms.

🔶 The longer-term picture remains strained. Real average full-time faculty salaries are about 9.5% below their fall 2019 level and about 5.8% below their fall 2008 level. In a matched-year comparison of 752 institutions, salary growth outpaced inflation at only 40.6% of institutions.

🔶 Salary gaps persist by gender and rank. Women made up 47.9% of full-time faculty overall in 2025-26, but only 37.8% of full professors. At the full professor level, women earned an average of $150,245, compared with $172,101 for men.

🔶 Part-time faculty compensation remains low. Among institutions reporting average pay for part-time faculty paid per course section, average pay was $4,093 for a standard three-credit course in 2024-25. Among institutions reporting minimum pay, the median minimum was $3,130, and 70% reported minimum pay of $4,000 or less.

The main issue is whether compensation is keeping pace with the cost of living, the demands placed on faculty, and the long-term role faculty are expected to play in sustaining academic quality.

That makes this more than an HR issue, as faculty compensation affects retention, morale, governance, program quality, student experience, and institutional reputation.

Stevens Strategy

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