Welcome back! I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and that your new year has started off on a bright note. Let’s dive right in. First, we look at some trends that will likely impact higher education this year. From there, we discuss the importance of data governance to the long-term success of AI initiatives before closing with encouraging research on the impacts of “belonging” on student success.  

After reading today’s issue, share your thoughts about the six trends impacting our sector in the comments! 

2026 Trends Impacting Higher Education 

From 6 higher education trends to watch in 2026 | Higher Ed Dive 

The Higher Ed Dive staff rounds up six trends they believe will shape higher education this year.  

Our Thoughts  

What I like about this piece is the mindset. It does not pretend that anyone can predict the next twelve months in higher education. Instead, it names the forces already in motion and treats them as things to watch, model, and plan around, even when the details are still in flux. That is a much more useful framing for campus leaders than the usual January tradition of confident predictions that age poorly by February.   

The other quiet value here is that these “trends” are not abstract. They map pretty cleanly to the pressure points most campuses are already managing: investigations and compliance risk, governance and board dynamics, ongoing cost containment, big shifts in federal aid policy, and continued volatility in international enrollment. If you read the list that way, it becomes less of a news roundup and more of a checklist for where your institution needs clearer scenarios, tighter decision rights, and better internal communication so you are not reinventing your response every time the ground shifts again.  

And yes, it is exhausting. But tuning out is not a strategy, especially when several of these signals are already showing up as measurable changes, not just vibes. International enrollment is a good example. Even modest percentage swings can turn into real budget consequences quickly because the revenue impact is concentrated, and it rarely stays contained to one office or one line item. The right takeaway is not panic. It is awareness, shared context, and a habit of asking, “If this trend accelerates, what breaks first on our campus, and what would we do differently?” 

Bad Data Impacts on AI 

From Is Your AI Falling Short? It’s Probably Bad Data | EdTech Magazine

Strong data governance practices are essential to support AI usage on campuses. 

Our Thoughts  

Even though I can see the “and by the way, we can help” turn near the end of this piece, the core message of this article from EdTech Magazine is still the right one: most “AI problems” on campus are really data problems wearing an AI costume. If your definitions are inconsistent, your access rules are fuzzy, and your data is stale, the model does not politely compensate. It confidently amplifies the mess. That is why AI frameworks keep pulling us back to fundamentals like governance, documentation, and ongoing risk management, and not just the next shiny tool. 

What I also appreciate here is the implicit nod to something a lot of higher ed teams are learning in real time: if you want AI to work in plain language, you need your data to be understandable in plain language. That is where semantic layers, business glossaries, and well-defined metrics start to matter a lot more than they used to. Not because “semantic layer” is the new buzzword, but because it is how you stop an AI agent from inventing its own definition of “enrolled,” “retained,” “credit hour,” or “first gen” depending on what table it tripped over first. Put differently, governed data products plus a semantic layer are how you make self-service analytics and AI answers sound like your institution, and not like a generic internet summary. 

If the AI bubble bursts, some of the marketing language will cool off. If it does not, AI becomes another permanent layer in the higher ed stack. Either way, the work still points to the same conclusion: cleaning up definitions, ownership, access, and quality is not busywork. It is the cost of admission for trustworthy analytics today, and for anything “agentic” tomorrow. 

Boosting Graduation Rates 

From Belonging in College Isn’t Just Nice—It Can Boost Graduation Rates | Inside Higher Ed

Recent research shows that a strong sense of belonging meaningfully improves graduation rates.  

Our Thoughts  

When I was an academic advisor more than 20 years ago, we did not need a regression model to tell us which students were most at risk. You could feel it in the conversations. The students who did not have a “place” yet, who were not sure who to ask for help, and who did not see themselves reflected anywhere on campus were the students who disappeared first. What I appreciate about this Wake Forest research is that it puts clean numbers behind that old gut instinct: a one step increase in a student’s reported sense of belonging from year one to year two was associated with a 3.4 percentage point higher likelihood of graduating in four years, and each one step increase was linked to a 2.7 percentage point higher likelihood of graduating in six years.  

The other reason I like this study is that belonging is a lever institutions can pull without waiting for a new building, a new system, or a new budget line. “Belonging” sounds like a vibe, but it is often built or broken by really practical barriers: confusing policies, frustrating registration steps, transportation headaches, and the thousand small moments that tell a student “this place was not designed with you in mind.” That is why the CUNY ASAP example matters here. It is not magic. It is barrier removal plus structured support, and it has produced large graduation gains in multiple evaluations and replications.   

And maybe that’s the real takeaway for 2026 planning. If belonging is meaningfully tied to graduation, then this is not a “nice to have” initiative we squeeze in after the big projects. It is the work. It may be harder in our politically charged environment because even the word belonging can get pulled into debates it was never meant to carry. And that’s where the research helps. If belonging is connected to completion, then the work becomes less about slogans and more about operations. In other words, it is the same work advisors have been doing for decades, just finally measured. Making it easier to register. Ensuring the handoff between offices is warm instead of transactional. Removing the little frictions that signal “good luck” instead of “we’ve got you.” This is the kind of unglamorous campus work that quietly moves outcomes in the right direction.