Student Success US 2025 made one thing clear: the definition of “student success” is rapidly expanding. Retention and persistence remain important, but they are no longer the destination. Institutions are thinking more holistically about how students learn, how they experience community, and how prepared they are for life and work beyond graduation.
Back in November, our Head of Marketing, Tate Gibson, joined by James Paisley-Knight and Scott Lomax, two of our account executives and Senior Product Manager Laura Howells-Barby, headed out to Atlanta to attend the annual conference.
In this blog, Tate shares the major themes that emerged across sessions and conversations, themes that will shape how Student Success leaders design strategies over the next several years.
1. Career readiness has become the north star
Across institutions, there is growing recognition that student success does not end at graduation. Many attendees emphasized the need to embed career readiness earlier and more intentionally throughout the student journey.
Career development is being reframed as a skillset rather than a service, and institutions are redesigning experiences to ensure students leave not just with credentials but with the practical abilities required in real workplaces.
This shift reflects broader pressures on higher education’s value proposition. As the public questions the worth of a degree, institutions are responding by elevating transferable skills, professional competencies, and a clearer bridge from classroom learning to career outcomes.
2. Predictive, proactive support is replacing lagging indicators
Institutions are moving away from relying solely on lagging metrics like GPA, dropout rates, and four-year graduation data. Instead, they are building models that capture a more holistic data set, such as:
- Class engagement
- Well-being and mental health indicators
- Utilization of study tools and academic resources
- Students’ sense of belonging
This proactive posture acknowledges that student risk becomes visible long before academic performance declines. By monitoring leading indicators, institutions can intervene earlier and design more targeted, timely support.
3. Rebuilding community and belonging is now core to learning
Collecting data on students' sense of belonging highlights a recurring message: student belonging is no longer a soft outcome. It is a learning outcome.
Post-pandemic students are more attached to their devices, less comfortable socially, and often struggle with interpersonal skills. Institutions are now treating interpersonal development as a core component of student readiness, not a peripheral benefit.
Creating community is not just about engagement; it directly influences retention, persistence, and self-efficacy. Several institutions discussed intentional strategies to:
- Build relational moments into classroom environments
- Strengthen peer-to-peer learning
- Create structures that help students feel known and supported
Belonging is being elevated as a prerequisite for academic and career success.
4. AI policy is shifting toward guided experimentation
Rather than adopting restrictive, top-down AI bans, many institutions are allowing faculty, staff, and students to experiment with multiple AI tools within the bounds of IT security and privacy standards. This experimentation has led to:
- Faculty integrating AI into lesson planning, grading workflows, and assignment design
- Instructors modelling transparency in how they use AI
- Classroom conversations focused on ethics, disclosure, and discipline-specific AI literacy
The goal is not just to ensure ethical use, but to prepare students for a workforce where AI competency will be expected.
5. Active learning is replacing the lecture first classroom
A major theme across sessions: traditional lecture formats are increasingly seen as outdated and disengaging. Many institutions shared models where students are responsible for creating or facilitating parts of the course through:
- Preparing mini-lectures
- Leading class discussions
- Designing interactive sessions
- Completing group and individual presentations
Because students must generate the content themselves, they remain more engaged and produce work that feels relevant to their peers. Faculty emphasized that this format better reveals true understanding and builds practical skills such as communication, collaboration, and critical thinking.
6. Foundational learning skills need reinvention
Several conversations highlighted the importance of revitalizing basic learning skills, not as remedial supports, but as essential academic competencies. These include:
- Effective notetaking and the ability to distinguish signal from noise
- Critical thinking and evidence evaluation
- Presentation and communication skills
- Managing presentation anxiety and building confidence
As AI increasingly takes over organizational tasks, educators stressed the importance of teaching students how to think, not just what to capture. AI tools are now being used to rehearse presentations, provide real-time feedback, and reduce anxiety through practice and familiarity.
7. Data tools are becoming part of early intervention and longitudinal success
Platforms like Qualtrics and Slate were repeatedly mentioned as tools for aggregating engagement data and identifying at-risk students early.
Tools such as Steppingblocks and Lightcast are also being used to track career trajectories over time, providing visibility into data such as whether graduates are working in fields related to their major, or how career paths change over several years.
These insights help institutions refine programs, tell a clearer story to prospective students, and educate current students about the broad utility of their degrees.
8. Accessibility and universal design remain a priority
Student Success professionals reported unprecedented increases, sometimes 200–300% year over year, in students identifying as neurodiverse or registering with disability services. Attendance challenges, especially in large states and commuter regions, are amplifying this need.
Institutions are working more closely with accessibility services to:
- Expand visibility of existing universal design tools
- Embed accessibility into academic and online learning environments
- Adapt instruction for a wider range of learning profiles
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is emerging as a required baseline rather than an accommodation strategy.
9. Trust needs to be rebuilt across the Higher Ed ecosystem
Finally, many sessions touched on the issue of trust, both the erosion of trust in higher education and the need to rebuild it among students, Faculty and parents/families.
Some institutions have begun engaging parents more intentionally, while others are prioritizing faculty support, especially in disciplines under pressure (such as the humanities). Rebuilding trust requires transparency, better communication, and student success practices that feel human, not transactional.
Final thoughts
Student Success US underscored that the field is at an inflection point. Institutions are expanding their definition of success to include career readiness, belonging, interpersonal skills, ethics, and long-term growth. They are blending academic, emotional, and social support in new ways, and using data and AI strategically rather than reactively.
For Student Success leaders, this next chapter will require deeper collaboration across academic affairs, careers, faculty development, and IT. But the shift is promising: a more holistic, proactive, student centered model that prepares learners not just to stay enrolled, but to thrive beyond graduation.
