How Technology Could Modernize Accreditation in Higher Education

by Presidents Forum | Jul 10, 2026 | Innovation, Policy

How Technology Could Modernize Accreditation in Higher Education

Higher education has embraced technology to improve teaching, learning, and student support.

According to Alison Griffin, it’s time to apply that same thinking to accreditation.

In a policy paper for the American Enterprise Institute, Griffin examined how industries such as healthcare and financial services use technology to strengthen quality assurance. Her conclusion: higher education has an opportunity to move beyond periodic compliance reviews toward more continuous, outcomes-focused quality improvement. Her full paper provides additional detail on the framework and recommendations.

Learning from other industries

Healthcare and financial services use real-time data to identify potential problems before they become crises.

For example, hospitals monitor key performance indicators continuously, allowing leaders to spot bottlenecks and intervene quickly instead of waiting months for a formal review.

Griffin argues that higher education could adopt a similar mindset by using technology to monitor institutional performance throughout the accreditation cycle rather than relying primarily on episodic reviews.

Focusing on outcomes instead of paperwork

One challenge Griffin highlights is the sheer volume of documentation involved in accreditation.

Some accrediting reviews involve hundreds of thousands of pages of material, making meaningful analysis difficult and limiting opportunities for timely feedback.

Technology creates an opportunity to shift attention away from managing documents and toward understanding outcomes.

Institutions already collect data on student retention, completion, financial health, enrollment trends, and workforce outcomes. Rather than waiting years between reviews, those indicators could help institutions identify emerging challenges and respond sooner.

Using data to strengthen peer review

Griffin is not arguing for replacing peer review.

Instead, she believes technology can make peer review more effective.

If institutions identify declining performance through continuous monitoring, accrediting organizations could connect them with peer institutions demonstrating strong results in those areas, creating opportunities for collaboration and improvement rather than simply evaluating compliance.

Technology should reduce compliance—not add to it

Griffin cautions that technology should not become another layer of institutional reporting.

Instead, its purpose should be helping institutions identify issues earlier, improve student outcomes, and strengthen quality assurance without increasing administrative burden.

As Griffin puts it, continuous monitoring should help institutions “address problems before they become a crisis, not attempt to create a whole new compliance industry.”

The bottom line

Technology has transformed quality assurance in industries where continuous improvement is essential.

Griffin believes higher education has an opportunity to do the same by using data to identify challenges earlier, focus accreditation on meaningful outcomes, and create a system that better supports both institutions and the students they serve.

Transcript

Wes Smith (01:20.952)
Hey Allison, good to see ya. Welcome to the podcast.

Alison Griffin (01:31.353)
Great to see you, Wes. Thanks for having me.

Wes Smith (01:34.488)
Hey, I I know you’ve been doing a lot of thinking around accreditation. And we we’ve had we have you on the show to talk through a little bit about accreditation and about large cycle, what’s happening in higher education, especially in terms of technology and how that’s impacting everything. And that’s a kind of a new conversation for us. What what is technology doing in terms of accreditation? You’ve done some thinking on that. Can you tell us a little bit about what you’ve done there?

Alison Griffin (02:04.144)
Absolutely. So about a year ago, I was asked by the American Enterprise Institute to write a policy paper on a topic of my choosing related to accreditation. And the thing that struck me most about accreditation was that we don’t often talk about technology when it comes to quality assurance. And so I asked my colleagues at AEI if I could actually explore this concept in a little bit more depth. And so as I got in

To that research, that desk research, I started to uncover that there are a number of industries that rely on technology for their quality assurance frameworks and their processes in a much more intimate way than what any of our accreditors across the higher education landscape do today. And so I took the pen, truly pen to paper, and started writing on this topic. And what I uncovered.

was was pretty interesting, particularly when it comes to documentation that our institutions are creating and producing for the quality review process.

Wes Smith (03:16.758)
It it doesn’t surprise me that education isn’t on the cutting edge of quality assurance monitoring using technology, but what are some industries that that you found were more on the cutting edge?

Alison Griffin (03:29.26)
absolutely. So, well, the two that I spent some time exploring in depth were healthcare, not a surprise, and financial services, also not a surprise. The similarities with healthcare is that they have a joint commission that actually evolved from episodic site visits to ongoing quality assurance indicators.

one of the examples that I was able to learn a lot more about was at Johns Hopkins. They run this patient flow dashboard with 10 KPIs, and administrators are able to spot quickly bottlenecks instead of seeing that months later. And so I just started thinking about what if we were to apply that same concept in the institution context. You know, all of our institutions have.

KPIs or strategy frameworks, they all show up differently. But what if you actually built a dashboard where you started to see some of those bottlenecks in the data that might be coming through? You know, whether they’re financial indicators or whether it’s staff transition or even student enrollment numbers, where institutions could be a little bit more just in time responsive as opposed to months or years later.

catching some of these issues.

Wes Smith (04:59.054)
I love in in higher ed, we take our accreditations seriously. And there are so many people that want to see accreditation to protect, you know, consumers. That being said, there is no more important industry for quality assurance than healthcare. It it is literally life and death in healthcare. And and those KPIs are saving people’s lives, right? They’re saying, hey, we have a problem here. We need fast intervention.

And so you it sounds like what you’re saying is if it’s good enough for for financial services, if it’s good enough for the healthcare sector, why aren’t we taking some notes from that and figuring out how we can have faster intervention in higher education? Does that sound about right?

Alison Griffin (05:44.901)
That sounds about right. I, you know, I think today our creditors are asking institutions essentially like, how can we help you make your case? Whereas I started asking the question, like, what do the data actually show? And so, what do the data show? How can we start looking at the outcomes of our institutions instead of trying to fit into

What our quality assurance framework wants us to be.

Wes Smith (06:18.774)
Right, right. Okay, so if you’re if you’re applying this to accreditation and you’re you’re saying, okay, we have so much information, we can we can review it, you know, as in real time, essentially, and we can have faster remedies for troubling situations. Can you give us an example or two about what higher education is in a position to monitor right now?

on a regular basis that we don’t monitor.

Alison Griffin (06:50.64)
Sure. I’d like to start by just giving your listeners an example that I laid out in the paper. And that was my review of some Department of Education records and the requirement that they have for agencies, so the accreditation agency, to produce documentation on what they’re doing. And the example was one of the

regional accreditors, I guess now operating, of course, across regions, produced over 800,000 pages for their review. So you think about even half of that, right? We’ll take 400,000 pages. A single reviewer who is reading 40 pages an hour, it’s gonna take them five years to do that work.

Wes Smith (07:43.362)
That is wild.

Alison Griffin (07:45.307)
Right. And so that’s that’s the and this is probably not a topic for today’s conversation, but you know, that’s the federal government’s oversight of the accreditor. And then you think about the accreditors’ oversight of all the institutions and or programs in its purview. And so if if if our agencies, our accrediting agencies aren’t staffed to be able to do

You know, this review, we are leaving institutions without a review that provides them with the feedback and opportunity for improvement that they may actually be seeking. And so your question about, you know, what what could technology aid in right now? There are a couple of things I feel like our institutions are ready broadly to do.

So completion and retention from a disaggregated with a disaggregated approach. We are already collecting a lot of that information. It’s already broadly comparable. Those are some of our leading indicators that our institutions are looking at. So your retention drop shows up years before your graduation rate does. Great. So we can check that box. Economic outcomes.

I think done really carefully, the measure to emphasize is actually the value-added earnings, the wage gain an institution generates relative to their cost of attendance, you know, not just raw graduate salaries. So, how do we start looking at some of those value-added metrics? And of course, there are institutions and systems that are starting to do that work, certainly given the federal rule changes around accountability.

I think we’re gonna start seeing that data emerge more readily. So that would be the second thing.

Wes Smith (09:43.51)
Right. I I love the focus on outcomes. accreditation has, you know, this this traditional approach, generally speaking, of taking a lot of time to review inputs. And getting to the outputs seems to be the most important thing we can do. You’ve named one that I think is just the highest level.

Output that you can measure, which is economic gain. You know, what what are the what are the impacts of you know this program from this institution on your bottom line as a consumer? So I think that we’ve we’ve hit on one of the most important outcomes. What other things could could you use technology to skip a lot of the inputs and get directly to the out outputs?

So we can focus on the most important things. Any other thoughts on that?

Alison Griffin (10:42.267)
So absolutely, I think one of I’ve been reading a lot of stories about this recently, but it are the financial health indicators and institutions that for years or in some cases a decade have been suffering through financial ups and downs. Of course, the economy impacts that, state funding, if you’re a public institution. But the surprising part to me is how many institutions now look back and say, wow, we

Could have caught that if we had only seen a full picture, if we could have only done some projections in a way that looked beyond three or five years. And so that financial health indicator, while not a learning outcome, it’s an outcome that students actually care about because it’s whether or not the institution that they’re attending is still going to exist.

One when they’re due to graduate, or two, when they want to come back 20 years as an alum. the other thing that I would suggest is that labor market alignment. So, you know, we have institutions that are collecting data. And in the case of public institutions, we have states and state systems, state agencies that are collecting information. How do we start filtering?

Some of that labor market information through an institutional mission. So I’m not even saying that we have to compare all the institutions in a single state. What if we started looking at them across Carnegie classification? Or we write? And so one, it’s a it’s an opportunity to also share information. I think that’s another place where accreditation could actually reform peer review.

Wes Smith (12:22.892)
Yeah. Interesting.

Alison Griffin (12:35.589)
I wouldn’t say we need to get rid of peer review. We need to leverage peer review in a wholly different way. So if you use technology to get after some of these indicators, get after your outcomes, you see a dip in performance. Wouldn’t you want to leverage the people in the network of higher education who are doing an excellent job at that indicator to come and be a collaborator with your

Wes Smith (13:03.17)
Yeah, absolutely.

Alison Griffin (13:04.177)
to improve on that outcome.

Wes Smith (13:06.604)
Right, right. That makes a lot of sense. some of our listeners out there, especially those who are very familiar with accreditation, I know what they’re saying right now. They’re saying, well, yeah, you can monitor some things, but you can’t monitor everything that accreditors do using technology. There are some parts of quality control that aren’t continuous. You know, there are new programs, there are, you know, seasonal enrollment, some things like that.

So what do you think the exception for continuous monitoring and input would be in the accreditation process, if there are any?

Alison Griffin (13:47.826)
So you’re asking of like the things that might be hard to standardize using another term. I actually I do believe it that one of the things that is hardest to standardize are the learning outcomes themselves, to be really honest. Like we don’t have a valid sort of comparable measure of what students actually learn across 4,000 wildly different institutions. And so pretending that we do.

Wes Smith (13:52.813)
Yes.

Alison Griffin (14:17.497)
Is almost like worse than admitting that we don’t. and so I I think that there is still room for improvement when it comes to those actual learning outcomes. And so I think recognizing that from the very beginning is really important. I would also say, you know, in in this environment of disagreeing better, you know, long-run sort of civic and just personal outcomes.

You know, the way in which people are finishing their program of study and contributing to their local community. I think that one, that’s not really something that accreditation is measuring now in a in a comprehensive way. And I do think that that’s something that is still hard to get after. So it’s almost like that return on investment that is fundamental to community building, I think is is really hard.

Wes Smith (15:16.226)
Yeah, that’s interesting. That’s that’s I I don’t see accreditation doing a lot of work in that area right now, but it you’re saying it it that’s a possibility.

Alison Griffin (15:16.266)
Alison Griffin (15:25.421)
Saying it’s I think it’s important, and I don’t know that it’s the role of accreditation. I think I’m saying that that is something that is still hard to standardize. I’m not sure that I would want accreditation to standardize that, but it would be interesting in this environment. again, where I think there is

opportunity for people when they disagree and they know how to disagree in a civil way than disagreeing uncivily and in an uncivil way. And I don’t know how we’re capturing that, but I think it would be important to to have a glimpse into that a little bit better than we do now.

Wes Smith (15:59.458)
Right. Yeah.

Wes Smith (16:08.3)
Yeah, it’s certainly a big issue in our society today. Okay, I’m gonna give you the last word on this. you you’ve done some thinking on it, we’ve talked through it. what would you say to our listeners is you know, your top takeaway and learning from from healthcare and financial services and other industries that we could bring and apply to higher education?

Alison Griffin (16:34.033)
So I would thank you for the last word. so I think the continua the idea of continuous monitoring should change behavior. So addressing problems before they become a crisis, not attempting to create a whole new compliance industry. And so my charge would be leverage technology where it can help make the process better.

For the learner and for the outcome, not adding another layer of compliance for the institution.

Wes Smith (17:09.358)
A fantastic on point for the president’s forum. You know, this idea of using technology to advance accreditation, make it more more relevant to the learner. That is right on message for the things that we’re working on in the forum. And we appreciate your insight on this and thanks for joining us today.

Alison Griffin (17:27.173)
Thanks for having me.

Wes Smith (17:30.454)
Okay.

Why Online Education Is Still a State-by-State Market

by Presidents Forum | Jul 8, 2026 | Policy

Why Online Education Is Still a State-by-State Market

Online education is often described as a national marketplace.

According to higher education analyst Phil Hill, the data tells a more nuanced story.

In his analysis of 2024 NC-SARA enrollment data, Hill found that online education is shaped less by a single national market than by a collection of state and regional markets, each with its own patterns, competitors, and policy decisions.

State markets shape student choice

While a handful of institutions recruit students nationwide, most colleges compete within distinct state and regional ecosystems.

For institutional leaders, understanding where students are coming from—and which institutions they are choosing instead—provides a clearer picture of the competitive landscape.

Hill argues that this type of analysis helps colleges move beyond broad assumptions and better understand the markets they actually serve.

Different states tell different stories

Hill groups states into three broad categories.

Some are “retention states,” where institutions offer enough online options that most residents remain in-state. Others, such as Texas and Florida, are large, highly competitive markets that attract institutions from across the country. Still others are “leakage states,” where many students leave the state to pursue online education elsewhere.

These patterns are often the result of long-term policy decisions, institutional investments, and workforce priorities rather than geography alone.

Why the data matters

For colleges, the data can help identify where opportunities exist, who the real competitors are, and which markets align with institutional strengths.

For policymakers, it provides insight into whether their state is meeting residents’ educational needs or losing students to institutions elsewhere.

Hill cautions against trying to replicate large national online providers overnight. Instead, he suggests institutions focus on programs that align with local workforce needs and build from their unique strengths.

The bottom line

Online education is not one national market.

Institutions that understand the dynamics of individual state markets—and design programs around student demand and regional workforce needs—will be better positioned to serve learners and compete effectively.

Transcript

Wes Smith (00:00.12)
Joining us today is Phil Hill from On Ed Tech. Phil, great to have you back.

Phil Hill (00:06.847)
Yep.

Phil Hill (00:18.345)
Yeah, it’s great to see you again. Always enjoy these conversations.

Wes Smith (00:22.146)
Yeah, these are interesting. This one’s a really interesting conversation to me. You’ve you’ve done some in-depth analysis on some NC SERA data. I kind of feel like a a a serious nerd right now saying that this is very interesting to me. And the the interesting thing is your in-depth analysis on NC SERA data. But forgive me for that. we there are there are there are dozens of dozens of us out there. So what what’s the key key takeaway to this data?

Phil Hill (00:46.571)
Hey guys.

Phil Hill (00:51.253)
Well, the key takeaway is first of all, this is a valuable resource. I mean, the fact that you have this state authorization reciprocity agreement and then the group collects this data and shares it, it’s a great community service. And as you look at it, you it makes it even more clear you don’t have an a single national online market. You have a bunch of state and regional markets.

And only a handful of players really span across all of the states. So the big takeaway is the fact that it’s valuable. And for any school that really wants to understand its position and where students are coming from and which states and who are you competing against, you can’t do better than this, than this data. And it’s important to think about your market. The second thing I would say, if you don’t mind me going on a little bit of a

Mini rant. California, for political reasons, never joined the reciprocity agreement. They did that. They wanted to maintain different consumer protection approaches. But one of the downsides of that is it’s a downside for the California institutions. California is not a member. Therefore, their institutions do not report data to NC SERA.

Wes Smith (01:48.81)
Yeah, please do. No, please do.

Phil Hill (02:15.561)
Yet their students, if they go to another school that’s out of state, that is reported. But that creates a blind spot. So one of the frustrating things is California institutions, public and private, would really benefit if that state would join. I don’t think they’re going to, but there’s it’s just ridiculous. And it does the opposite of helping consumer protection based on how they do it.

Wes Smith (03:32.877)
We have some we have some indicating data on students from California that go to other institutions that are out of state, but we don’t have the same richness of data for those California students who stay in state. Is that right?

Phil Hill (03:50.42)
Yeah, that’s correct. And so what I did is I didn’t want to have a complete blind spot for California institutions because they are so important. So in the case for those institutions, I substituted the iPads distance enrollment data. The problem is for out of state students taking online programs in California institutions, we don’t know which state they came from. All we can say is they’re out of state.

Wes Smith (04:16.392)
yeah. Yeah, okay.

Phil Hill (04:19.955)
So it’s a partial blind spot by the way that I combine the data.

Wes Smith (04:25.409)
You’ve done your best to overcome it, but there’s still some data that’s lacking there. Got it, got it. Okay, that makes sense. especially for our California listeners. If they’re if they want to listen and evaluate your analysis, they’ve gotta remember it’s a caveat that that’s the one thing you can’t tell.

Phil Hill (04:29.183)
That’s that’s correct. Yeah.

Phil Hill (04:39.517)
Yeah, and I th I’m the only one that I know of who’s sort of combined these two approaches so it’s not an either or, so hopefully it’s valuable for them.

Wes Smith (04:47.339)
Right, right. Okay. Well, so describe the the three categories of states that that you’ve put together. I I know that I know that you’ve done a lot of work on that, and you have strategic out-of-state targets, you’ve got retention states, and you’ve got leakage states, but explain to our audience what that means and how you’ve how how you’ve categorized them.

Phil Hill (05:08.879)
And I should probably describe it the way I’ve categorized it is sort of a public policy type of view, where that a lot of state policymakers and schools in states, you don’t like to see your students going to programs out of state, at least too much. Why aren’t we serving our own residents? You take that argument. So that’s sort of the basis of it.

And if you do that, you get one group who in Arizona, where I live, is a good example. Is you have multiple in-state institutions who offer online programs, you know, the Arizona State, the University of Phoenix, all of these, but you’re serving your own residents. They have plenty of online options within that state. You have big states, California, Florida, Texas in particular.

That are so big and concentrated, that’s the target states. So if you have an online program, you would love to get California students and Texas students because it’s just such a big source. That makes those states quite competitive or the competition for those students. And then a third is the other side of it saying leakage states.

Wes Smith (06:23.351)
Okay.

Phil Hill (06:28.415)
These are states that for public policy or various reasons, they just don’t have a whole lot of online programs available for their own residents. And therefore a large percentage go out of state. And the one that I had in the original post that you referred to was the state of Washington. So look at just how big Western governors is within the state of Washington.

Now there’s historical reasons for that. That was one of the earliest universities using Western governors, and it was almost like a flagship state presence for them. But so you have different types of states, and it very much points back to state policy and the schools and how competitive they are within there. So you have different markets, but you have different types of state policies as well.

Wes Smith (07:23.799)
Well, at the president’s forum, we just have s you know, a lot of institutions who who have, you know, this online capability. And they’re operating in multiple states. Some of them are, you know, we have California based that that have a lot of you know in state possibilities, but also national. you know, you mentioned WGU and SNHU out there with national presence. What this this

Phil Hill (07:33.472)
Yes.

Wes Smith (07:53.632)
analysis that you’ve done, what kind of of an impact do you think it should be having on these institutions? What what should presence form institutions be looking for in this data?

Phil Hill (08:07.871)
Well, hopefully I’ve made the data digestible and more easily available. So it’s not just individual business analysts within your institutions who get what’s happening. So you have a wider ability to see the data. And you start seeing things such as if we want to be competitive for this mention Washington, well then which schools are already serving Washington State students? Where are they already going? So who is our

Actual competition. Texas, highly competitive as well. So if you’re trying to serve Texas students as a target market, whether you’re in state or out of state, the biggest thing to say is how am I doing? Who are my I use the word competitors, but where are students already choosing to go? And therefore, try to better understand the decisions that students have.

Wes Smith (08:57.708)
Mm-hmm.

Phil Hill (09:04.117)
Who are they trying to think of when they for those who want an online program? What are my choices? And quickly realize it’s not going to be the same answer in Arkansas that it’s going to be in Michigan or Arizona or somewhere else. It’s very localized. So you need to be able to, if this is our market and here’s where we’re going, for these students who are, what are their choices really? That’s what I’m trying to make it easier to understand.

With this analysis.

Wes Smith (09:35.82)
Right. Well, okay. So now flip it to a state policymaker. So we clearly there’s a reason that institutions want to understand what’s going on in each state, especially the states that that they have a where they have a lot of students or they seek to have a lot of students. But for a policymaker from any given state, what does this information help them do?

Phil Hill (10:02.229)
Hopefully it gets out of get them past the initial shallow level of understanding. And maybe that doesn’t sound right, but what I hear so often at state policy level is we can’t keep sending our students to southern New Hampshire. We need to serve our own residents and some of our investments. Well, you need to go beyond that. You know, is it really southern New Hampshire? Is it Liberty Is it, you know.

University of Maryland Global Campus, how many students are doing this. So it’s basically for state policy. It’s again to go past the surface level understanding, but it’s true, it it should sort of inform do we need to invest more? That’s where I’ve heard people using this already. Hey, I love these charts. I want to take it to the legislature when we’re arguing for money.

And here’s why should we should be serving these students. We shouldn’t just be quote unquote sending them out of states. So it’s in that debate about how much do you invest and try to serve these residents where that type of where the data should be valuable.

Wes Smith (11:13.677)
So, Phil, I know you’ve been around this for a long time in this ed tech world. And so now I’ve got a question. it’s it’s I think sophisticated state policymakers would probably ask this question, and that is it takes a lot to create an in-state option that could compete with some of these programs who have been working on this for decades now. it is is that

Phil Hill (11:37.866)
Yes.

Wes Smith (11:40.894)
Does your would your data show that that is accurate? Number one. And number two, is it worth the investment for a state to have an option to compete with with other options that are have been at this for a really long time and have have kind of, you know, they’ve they smoothed out the process for students? Tell me what you think about that.

Phil Hill (12:06.011)
well, the data does go back to 2015. So you have a historical basis and you could look at any institution and say, when did they start? And yes, the big national brands, you’re going to find the answer was in the 2000s, most likely, or early 2010s, or with some of them back in the 1990s. But what would I do as a state policy maker? I would say the choice is not a binary, do we go for.

online students nationwide. You probably miss that bus just from a if you build it, they will come mentality. What you have the opportunity is to say, we know our local workforce. We know this specialization is what we really need for not only our students, but also for our local workforce. And we can serve our students better because we know them and and we’re right here. So specialization

And you know, thinking of what makes us unique, and part of that uniqueness is your local workforce and how to how to serve them. That’s where the opportunity is. So can you still get into the national market, if you will? Yes, you better be patient. Yes, it’s possible, but there’s a lot more opportunity to target specific programs and specific strengths of your college or university.

system, if you will.

Wes Smith (13:36.632)
So I I mean one of the big takeaways for me in in this conversation and based on, you know, your analysis is it it really is it’s not as clear cut of a national conversation as most people believe. It it is very much driven by regional markets or even state level markets.

And if you’re not playing at the state level and understanding the dynamics there, you’re probably missing a lot on this. Is that is that what you ended up with?

Phil Hill (14:10.571)
Yeah, I yes, that that is definitely the way to interpret it. And it is interesting looking at the data. Although you’ve self-identified, you’re a data nerd, so you naturally look at this, but there’s a pretty rich story about each of the individual states and where students are, and usually when you look at it.

You’re able to start saying, look at that school in this position. I remember that was a decision that was made in 2012. And so it starts to tie in historical decisions as well as you look at it. but yeah, as I said, it’s not a binary decision, it’s which students.

Wes Smith (14:52.951)
Phil, give us an example of that, of of something that you can look back to and see the history and that’s why this th these numbers look the way they do.

Phil Hill (15:02.761)
Well, I mentioned state of Washington. Early on, they didn’t it’s not just that Western governors set up an online presence in Washington. The state encouraged it. This is our approach to online education. And that really ramped up Western governors in that state. So so that’s one example. You have states such as Arkansas, where they, you know, combining their e versity and then they acquired Grantham University and

Wes Smith (15:22.111)
in Washington. Okay.

Phil Hill (15:32.572)
The state system is really trying to serve students more. That’s another decision that you start to see in the data. Now that’s more recent, but you definitely see that in the data as well. And I guess another one, the global campuses like UMass Global, they now the that was an example where they came out saying we can’t keep sending our students to southern New Hampshire. And I think initially they might have been.

too much of a it’s us versus them. But as the programs developed, I think they’re starting to see some changes in how the students are actually getting served. But it’s those types of decisions that you see. One other that I’ll mention, again, coming from Arizona, there’s an HR component to it. This is almost Silicon Valley for online education. So you have so many people who work in this area, that’s where you’ve had

A Arizona State, University of Phoenix, Grand Canyon University, Rio Salado, now University of Arizona Global Campus, which is now University of Arizona, but they’re all co located. And so this is a unique state because you have so many providers here right in the same area. And you get a unique thing.

Wes Smith (16:50.507)
That’s one thing that popped when I was looking at the data is that Arizona is, you know, just I mean, it’s the national leader with regard to online education. There’s it’s it’s hard to debate that any other state has an you know, anywhere near the type of influence that that Arizona does.

Phil Hill (17:06.983)
And the range of providers offering different programs coming from Arizona. Yeah, that is quite unique.

Wes Smith (17:14.463)
Right. You know, New Hampshire has one and Utah has one. And so you get you get the idea that Arizona has you know half a dozen that are come that have come together to provide this and it shows up in the data.

Phil Hill (17:18.227)
Yes.

Phil Hill (17:28.393)
Yeah. And and this goes, by the way, it goes back to my mini rant about California. California institutions, I bet they would love to be able to see this which state students are going where and how do we stack up. So that’s part of the reason there’s a lot of schools in California who are doing online. They would do a lot better if they had better visibility into this.

Wes Smith (17:51.125)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Phil, this has been very interesting, super clear and useful data. We appreciate you taking the time to come and talk to us about it. We’ll we’ll of course link your article in the show notes. Where can our listeners find more information about this if they’re just, you know, looking for it?

Phil Hill (18:10.751)
Well, the on ed tech newsletter is a short answer, but I will point out that I’ve actually recently for premium subscribers to the on ed tech newsletter, on ed tech plus, I’ve actually created a enrollment an enrollment data tool that’s interactive that’s available. So the NC SERA data, the iPads distance enrollment data, you can do your own filtering and sorting and even pick.

Let me look at my school and my peers and see how they compare. So it’s on ed tech, but in particular, the pr there’s now a premium version that’s a data explorer that you could get a lot more out of this.

Wes Smith (18:52.481)
Fantastic. Fantastic. Okay. Well we’ll we’ll send our our listeners to on ed tech to to check this out. And Phil, we look forward to having you back on the show very shortly, I’m sure.

Phil Hill (19:04.841)
Yeah. Well great. I enjoyed this as always.

Wes Smith (19:07.714)
Thanks, Phil.

Beyond the Hype: Measuring the Real Effectiveness of AI Learning Tools

by Presidents Forum | Jul 6, 2026 | Innovation, Outcomes and Accountability

Beyond the Hype: Measuring the Real Effectiveness of AI Learning Tools

By Jessica Smagler, Head of Research and Outcomes, Kyron Learning

Proving that students are learning – especially in new and innovative programs – is harder than it sounds. And the rapid proliferation of AI tools has made this more urgent, not less. Most AI tools promise transformative outcomes but often provide little evidence to back them up. For institutions trying to make responsible decisions about what to adopt and who to trust, the question isn’t just does this work – it’s how would we even know?

As an AI learning company working with institutions across higher education, we’ve had to think hard about what meaningful evidence looks like and how to build toward it when rigorous outcome data takes time to accumulate.

What we’ve found is that measuring the impact of a genuinely new kind of educational technology isn’t a single leap to a finish line. It’s a progression from early signals to deeper evidence, and each stage has real value if you know what it can and can’t tell you. We think of it as four stages: Engagement & Confidence, Formative Signals, Persistence & Achievement, and Sustained & Verified Outcomes.

This is a framework built from practice, developed alongside institutions doing this work in real conditions. We offer it as an approach that can help any institution navigate the evidence question more clearly, whatever tools they’re evaluating.

Engagement & Confidence: Early Signs That Something Is Working

Engagement and confidence are not learning outcomes, but they are valuable prerequisites. This is especially true when introducing new modalities. Before you can measure what students have learned, you need to know whether they are showing up, staying engaged, and experiencing the instruction as credible and useful. Research in educational psychology is consistent on this: time-on-task and perceived relevance are preconditions for learning. Students who are disengaged aren’t learning, regardless of how good the content is. And students who feel confused or unsupported tend to disengage.

Early confidence data at Kyron was encouraging: more than 80% of learners reported feeling more confident after a Kyron lesson and wanted to see more of them in their courses. When a learning tool builds confidence, students are more likely to keep engaging with it. Meanwhile, at one fully online partner university, students were spending over 22 minutes on each Kyron module compared to roughly 3 minutes for traditional video content. Students who spend seven times longer with content are, at a minimum, giving learning a chance.

Formative Signals: Seeing Inside the Learning Experience

Formative signals start to tell you whether learning is actually happening. And this is where AI tools, if designed well, have a meaningful advantage over many other modalities.

A textbook can’t tell you where a student got confused. A video can’t surface a misconception. But an AI tutor, by its very nature, is witnessing student thinking in real time – the questions students ask, the reasoning they attempt, the points where they struggle, and the moments where something clicks. The question is whether a given tool is designed to make that visible and actionable.

Institutions should be asking this directly of any AI learning tool they evaluate: what formative insight does your platform generate, and how does it get into the hands of instructors?

At Kyron, formative insight is central to how the platform works. Learner misconceptions are surfaced to instructors at both the individual and section level. Instructors can access full transcripts of student interactions, seeing exactly how each learner reasoned through a problem, where they needed scaffolding, and how their understanding evolved. And we use those same interaction patterns internally to continuously improve the learner experience.

This kind of data is the bridge between early engagement signals and the outcome measures that ultimately matter. It won’t tell you whether students passed – but it will tell you a great deal about whether they’re on track.

Persistence & Achievement: Proof That Learning is Happening

Persistence and achievement are where the framework starts to deliver on its promise. Persistence – whether students stay enrolled, continue engaging, and complete what they started – is one of the most consequential measures in higher education, particularly for the populations most at risk of stopping out. Achievement measures whether they actually learned: grades, pass rates, competency demonstrations.

These are the outcomes institutions care most about. They take time to accumulate, but when they do come, they are the most direct answer to the question this whole framework is designed to answer: is this working?

The evidence across our institutional partners is compelling. At one partner institution, students who engaged with Kyron showed statistically significantly higher grades on case study assignments and stronger persistence rates across multiple health information technology courses. At a community college partner, the pass rate for a gateway English course rose from 68% to 72% — breaking the 70% threshold for the first time in the institution’s history. And at a non-profit workforce development organization, Kyron’s integration into an HR track led to a 15% increase in course completion and a 20% increase in learner retention.

These are not anecdotes. They are the validation that the earlier signals were pointing in the right direction.

Sustained & Verified Outcomes: Building Evidence That Holds

Programs that can offer solid persistence and achievement data are in a great position to start thinking about even more sophisticated evidence. That might mean longitudinal tracking – following the same cohorts over time to see whether gains persist and compound. It might mean quasi-experimental designs that allow for more rigorous comparisons across sections or populations. Or it might mean pursuing independent, third-party validation that makes findings credible beyond a single institutional context.

At Kyron, this is exactly where we are headed. In the coming months, we will be incorporating an in-app assessment tool that will allow institutions to measure learning gains over time directly within the platform. We’re also deepening our understanding of dosage: how much Kyron does a learner need to see meaningful gains? And we’re pursuing third-party validation to ensure our findings are as rigorous as students deserve.

AI in higher education will only be as good as our willingness to hold it accountable. That means building measurement frameworks that are honest about what early signals can and can’t tell us, and patient enough to follow the evidence all the way to outcomes that actually change student trajectories. The institutions that do this well won’t just make better decisions about technology. They’ll be better positioned to serve the students who need them most.

Transcript

Wes Smith (00:04.091)
All right. Here we go.

Well, welcome to the President’s Forum podcast today, Nestor. Thanks for being with us.

napereira (00:13.199)
Thank you, I’m happy to be here.

Wes Smith (00:14.639)
Hey, before we get into some of the questions about AI and about how Miami Dade is using AI, tell us a little bit about Miami Dade and your role there.

napereira (00:25.806)
Sure, absolutely. So Miami Dade College is one of the largest and most diverse institutions of higher ed in the United States. And we serve over 120,000 students annually across eight campuses and MDC Online. And really our mission is really to provide accessible high quality education to a predominantly first generation, low income and minority student population.

really the communities that need higher education the most and have historically had the least access to it. And you know it’s my privilege as Vice Provost for Academic and Learning Technologies to lead the college’s digital learning infrastructure, overseeing MDC Online, which again serves those 120,000 students, along with our Canvas Learning Management System, our AI Student Success Platform, and really

trying to move our students forward in whatever chosen path they would like to take in their careers, in their professional lives. and and I just ensure that the tools and the platforms and the experiences that we build aren’t just innovative, but that they’re effective for the MDC students and really founded to serve them.

Wes Smith (01:29.231)
Right.

Wes Smith (01:40.612)
Yeah, we talk about that a lot at the presence forum. The idea there’s a difference between, you know, innovation and accountable innovation. So, you know, you y there are a lot of cool things you could be doing, but do they decrease cost for students or do they, you know, provide a better pathway to success for students? That’s the ultimate question, right?

napereira (01:48.555)
Right.

napereira (02:01.494)
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s something I’m happy to to talk with you about today.

Wes Smith (02:05.667)
Yeah, so I know Miami Dade has been out in front on on putting AI in cr classrooms and and you’re looking at at things that a lot of schools you’re doing things a lot of schools are, you know, still talking about looking at. They they would love to get to a position to execute on it. But tell us a little bit about what first got you interested in AI in in higher education and the problems you were trying to solve for your students.

napereira (02:32.223)
Yeah, so really the you know, the honest answer is that we weren’t really chasing a trend because there’s so many trends now in AI trying to to steer you in a particular way. We were trying to solve a persistence problem. So at Miami Dade College, we we serve this student population again, where the majority are first generation college students and many are working adults and balancing jobs and family. and really a significant number of them also facing language barriers or gaps in academic preparation.

So, really, the the traditional model of office hours and email didn’t really apply and wasn’t really designed for this type of student. They really needed you know, support at 11 o’clock at night, right before something was due, maybe in the language that they think in, and really calibrated to where they actually were in their understanding and not necessarily where we assume them to be in their understanding of the material in a particular course. That’s what really

drove us toward AI and and we started with the question, you know, where are the students most likely to stop persisting? Right? What what would have to be true for that moment to go differently? And you know, the answer kept pointing to access for us. And really to this idea of timely personalized support that scales across thousands of students without proportionally scaling that cost. And that was very important to us as well.

you know, and today we’re solving for that through Lucy. And and Lucy is our live user coach for you. She’s an AI agentic platform that that we co-created. and it really functions as an AI student success coach that’s embedded right in our learning management system. she brings together proactive outreach, real-time faculty alerts, and connected tutoring and advising services so that the right intervention reaches the right student at the right moment.

And really we’ve moved from this curiosity in AI to really making a part of our infrastructure.

Wes Smith (04:33.955)
Yeah, I love it. And and you had a a specific use case for that. You wanted to work on persistence. How can we leverage AI to to advance persistence or keep our students engaged and and progressing? Is that does that sound about right?

napereira (04:50.024)
That sounds about right. And and you know, we’re starting with our online modality where students can sometimes feel a bit disconnected just because of the asynchronous nature of how these these courses run. so that’s where we started and we’re expanding that across all the modalities at D C.

Wes Smith (05:05.081)
Yeah, I love it. So you teamed up with Kyron learning on this, is that right? So walk me through that a little bit. How did you actually get it into your courses? Like how how did you take it from an idea of we need more persistence to students have Lucy or students have other assets that that they can use to stay more connected?

napereira (05:09.254)
Yes, that’s correct.

napereira (05:30.319)
Right, so Chiron’s a great partner and it really functions like an interactive lecturer inside the course itself, right? And it engages students in real-time conversational dialogue, which was very important to us. Again, because of that asynchronous nature of of online courses, we thought that this kind of lecture would be really beneficial. But the real reason is that you know the technology for us identifies and corrects misconceptions.

As they’re forming. So as the students are having this conversation with the AI, the AI is kind of understanding what are the misconceptions that these students are having and how can I help them? How can I ask deeper questions and steer them in the right direction? And this was important to us in terms of persistence. This this data, this analysis of students and their misconceptions comes about you know before a quiz or an exam might reveal them, right? So it’s

prior to that happening. And that’s really a a different and a and a meaningful different model than traditional content delivery. And the way that we introduced it, we introduced it kind of deliberately and and not all at once. And we started with our ENC 1101, which is our introductory English composition course at MDC, and really made sure that our instructional design team was trained and ready to support our faculty really before they even touched the technology and the platform. So

For us, the infrastructure and the support really existed on day one and not really as an afterthought. you know, yeah. Absolutely, yeah. and really from there we expanded course by course using what we learned in each rollout to really refine you know what we saw next.

Wes Smith (07:03.097)
Yeah, that seems really smart.

Wes Smith (07:13.839)
How long does it take you to embed within a single course? Like is that like a a quarter long process or or are you being able to rapidly scale that at this point?

napereira (07:24.963)
We’re we’re able to rapidly scale that at this point. Initially we took our time because the platform was new to us. but once we were able to train you know, internally with our instructional designers and with our faculty, we found that that was actually a rather quick platform to be able to embed this in the courses, right? And and all the technical things in the background as to where how it gets inserted into the course and all that, that’s part of what my technical team does. As far as faculty, they just need to understand how the platform works.

Wes Smith (07:30.554)
Mm-hmm.

napereira (07:54.094)
and really serve as the subject matter experts in in their given course. and we found that that does not necessarily take that long. You know, it could be weeks where you can embed this technology in there and really train the AI is what what faculty are doing.

Wes Smith (08:08.613)
So it sounds like faculty pretty supportive, they’re moving it, they’re advancing it. Tell us a little bit about how students are responding.

napereira (08:15.905)
Yeah, so students have responded really well to this and we’ve seen we do take surveys you know after each session to kind of see where students are at, how they feel about the technology, and it was overwhelmingly positive. One of the one of the things that I thought was an important indicator was kind of what I talked about before. Like d do students have that a better connection now because they have these lectures with the AI and the AI is is kind of picking up on on

you know, what they need help on and that the AI is there twenty four seven for them. and all of our surveys showed a kind of positive reaction to that to that connection and the explanation of course material inside of of the courses through the use of Chiron technology.

Wes Smith (09:01.581)
Nice. So I mean, we are living in an age where we’ve been talking about personalized education for a long, long time and the time and resources for one individual human to, you know, to provide individualized care for each student is it’s almost pro it’s prohibitive in almost every instance. But with AI, we can expand, we can we can see students get that personalized education at scale.

napereira (09:07.798)
Right.

Wes Smith (09:29.207)
And you’re you’re watching it right now, and what I’m hearing is students are reacting positively to that. Is that

napereira (09:35.829)
Yeah, absolutely. And we have fantastic faculty at at Miami Dade College. like you said, we’ve been talking about personalized experiences and learning for a long time, but sometimes it’s it’s kind of f it’s physically difficult to be able to do that you know, at scale with so many students where we see the AI as really as another tool for our faculty. You know, faculty are able to see those misconceptions in real time. They’re able to understand, better understand what specific students

are having issues with at a specific time. and the AI can kind of remember that across you know across the the course of of of that class that they’re taking and really keep probing the student to figure out ever if there are any other misconceptions.

Wes Smith (10:19.865)
Yeah, I love it is as a tool for faculty to be able to personalize their efforts more to each individual. So yeah, I mean it’s a win, it’s a win for faculty, it’s a win for students. And I know that a lot of education leaders that aren’t at Miami Dade and and they’re at different institutions out there watching and they’re thinking, okay, yeah, we love this, we’re we’re curious about it.

that they’re in that curiosity stage. They’re they’re interested though in making the leap and actually doing it. You’ve you’ve made the leap. Tell us lessons learned for for any of those education leaders out there watching. What would you recommend as far as taking the next step towards actually adopting and making it a reality for their students?

napereira (11:10.227)
Yeah, I think really the the biggest lesson learned is you have to start with the student problem and not necessarily a specific tool, right? So you kind of have to work your way backwards from from the results that you want to see and then go backwards. And it’s really easy to, I think, to get pulled into what can this technology do or that one or that AI platform or that one, instead of what is actually getting in our students’ way right now from persisting and from s for succeeding.

So really every piece of what we’ve built from Lucy to the Chiron integration really traces back to a specific point of friction that we could name before we ever evaluated a vendor. Right. and then secondly, you know, we really built the infrastructure before you built the rollout. and we trained our instructional designers ahead of faculty, like we discussed before, to just make sure that this new tool was

was easy to understand, it was accessible, and then had that faculty buy-in. I’d also say, you know, a third thing is try and treat it as a phased rollout and not necessarily a huge launch event. you know, we’ve had a a real roadmap, you know, what’s live now, what’s coming next quarter, what’s what’s further out. and that phasing really let us prove the value at each stage.

instead of you know betting everything on one big rollout and also gives us an opportunity to hear feedback in real time from our faculty and students and make adjustments in the platform as as we see you know as we saw necessary. And then finally I’d say bring leadership real data, you know, not just a demo of what it can do. And institutional buy-in I think from you know what was actually happening with students and and not just what the technology could theoretically do, but what

changes and what positive effects did we actually see.

Wes Smith (12:57.401)
Right. I love I love your focus on data and I like, you know, this idea of starting with a student problem that you want to solve as opposed to you know, flashy new technology that you think looks cool. No, let’s let’s let’s figure out the problem that we’re working to solve. So so speaking of that, tell us what you’re seeing about you know, on your persistence issue at Miami Dade. Are you seeing the data?

napereira (13:06.13)
Right.

Wes Smith (13:24.335)
That is encouraging to say, okay, what we’re doing here is advancing our goals and persistence.

napereira (13:31.482)
Yes, very very encouraging data we’re seeing, you know, particularly from our spring semester that just finished you know several weeks ago. We’re seeing students that have actively engaged with the AI where those misconceptions were detected. We’ve seen them have measurably higher pass rates and persistence than students who were kind of on the same level but did not necessarily interact with the AI. It was important for us to kind of see that. we’ve also had some faculty that taught the exact same course for us.

one using the AI model and one not, and then doing a comparison between them. And we did see higher persistence and higher pass rates in the course that had the AI. And then some qualitative data that we received from from students about how they felt. How did you feel about having that help, that assistant, that that guide there for you 24-7? And that was very positive. We also wanted to to have qualitative data as well. And that was very positive from both the students and the faculty. And

You know, one other thing that we that we developed in conjunction with the AI is kind of this AI dashboard that lives in the LMS for faculty to have the data at their fingertips. They don’t have to dig through and try to find out, you know, how are the students interacting with the AI, what has it identified as misconceptions. This is all in one location for faculty and they really appreciated that.

Wes Smith (14:47.065)
Yeah. I love it. I l I love that you’ve got the data to to show you now and that you can now start to refine your systems and improve. That’s that’s a great stage to be at. Okay, so finally, l I I want to pick your brain on one last thing and then we’ll let you go. That is, you know, a a lot of this series is intended to inform policymakers. People in Washington, DC or in the state houses,

Or or you know, those in in education that are building the future system for our students about innovation and technology and specifically about AI. Is there any advice that you would give to policymakers who are building that, you know, next next generation of policy that will facilitate higher education? What do you want them to understand about AI and what AI can do for students?

napereira (15:45.881)
Yeah, it’s a great question. the first thing I I guess I’d want poly policymakers to understand is that AI in education is not primarily about automation, right? It’s really about access. And for generations, you know, we’ve been discussing personalized academic support, and we’ve had that in the past. We’ve had tutors and advisors and we’ve attempted to have real time feedback and all that. that’s been available to students maybe who could afford it or who attended well resourced institutions.

you know, for example, the students at at Miami Dade College, most of whom are again working adults and many of whom are are the first in their families to pursue a degree, they’ve had those access opportunities at at MDC, but what AI lets us do is really scale that access further and extending that personalized support to every student at a scale that really wasn’t possible before.

I I’d also ask, you know, and advise policymakers to consider specifically what do those funding mechanisms look like that reward AI implementation? and tie those to measurable results. again, completion rates, credential attainment, workforce readiness, things like that, and not just adoption metrics, right? you know, yeah, absolutely. And and really

Wes Smith (17:03.311)
Yeah, I love that. Well look let’s let’s tie it to outcomes, not not implementation. Yeah. It’s not it’s not about the the fad of, you know, we adopt it. It’s about it’s really about persistence and completion.

napereira (17:08.927)
Yeah.

napereira (17:18.923)
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I think that the the the recognition, particularly to colleges and community colleges and and other universities around the country that that enroll the largest student populations in higher ed, we really think that those students that are balancing their lives, their work, their family, school and all that, they really need to be central to this conversation about about AI. because if AI driven innovation doesn’t reach

these institutions and those students that really need it the most. I think we’ve missed the the you know, the students who need it and really the workforce pipeline that the economy depends on.

Wes Smith (17:56.112)
Yeah, I love I love what you’re doing down there at Miami, Dave, Nestor. Thank you so much for sharing your college’s approach and and just your lessons learned. I think it’s really helpful for everybody else that that’s watching and that’s thinking about, hey, we we should probably be moving in the same direction. So this is this is fantastic.

napereira (18:15.317)
Than thank you so much, Wes. I really appreciate you inviting me on.

Student-Centric Higher Education Means Designing Around Today’s Learners

by Presidents Forum | Jul 2, 2026 | Outcomes and Accountability, Video

Student-Centric Higher Education Means Designing Around Today’s Learners

Student success begins with understanding who today’s students are.

For many colleges and universities, the traditional image of a full-time student attending classes on a residential campus no longer reflects reality. Today’s learners are working adults, parents, first-generation students, military-connected learners, and others balancing education alongside careers, families, and financial responsibilities.

That reality is shaping the Presidents Forum’s work this July.

Student centricity is more than access

Improving access remains an important goal, but enrolling students is only the beginning.

A truly student-centered institution helps learners persist, complete a credential, and translate that education into meaningful opportunity.

That requires institutions to design around the realities students face rather than expecting students to adapt to institutional structures.

Flexible learning options, responsive student services, clear academic pathways, and strong career connections all contribute to student success.

Designing institutions around students

Across the Presidents Forum, member institutions are demonstrating what student-centered innovation looks like in practice.

That includes expanding online and hybrid learning, strengthening student support services, improving transfer pathways, adopting technology that reduces barriers, and building closer connections between education and workforce opportunity.

While each institution approaches the work differently, the goal is the same: creating systems that help more students succeed.

Policy shapes what institutions can achieve

Student-centered innovation also depends on a policy environment that supports new approaches while maintaining accountability for outcomes.

This month, the Presidents Forum continues to monitor two important federal developments.

The Department of Education is expected to release its proposed Accreditation, Innovation, and Modernization (AIM) rule, which could influence accreditation, institutional flexibility, and accountability across higher education.

The Forum is also tracking ongoing discussions surrounding the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), recognizing its importance for military-connected students and institutions that serve them.

As these developments unfold, the Forum will continue helping members understand what changes may mean for their institutions and their students.

The bottom line

Student centricity is not a single initiative. It is a commitment to designing higher education around the lives students actually lead.

Whether through institutional innovation or public policy, the goal remains the same: helping more students access opportunity, complete their education, and achieve lasting success.

Transcript

In July, the Presidents Forum is focusing on student centricity — what it means to design higher education around the realities, needs, and goals of today’s learners.

That includes working adults, parents, first-generation students, military-connected learners, and others who need flexible, high-quality pathways that connect learning to opportunity.

Across the Forum, this theme is central to our work. Student centricity is not just about access. It is about whether students can persist, complete, and see real value from their education.

That means stronger support systems, clearer pathways, more responsive delivery models, and policy environments that make innovation possible while keeping student outcomes at the center.

On the policy front, we are continuing to follow two major developments. First, the Department of Education’s upcoming AIM proposed rule on accreditation, innovation, and modernization. Second, ongoing activity around the NDAA.

The Forum is tracking the AIM proposed rule closely and preparing to help members understand its implications. The NDAA remains more uncertain, so we will continue monitoring developments there and keep members informed as there is more clarity.

As always, our focus remains: advancing policies and practices that help institutions better serve students and strengthen the future of higher education.

Supporting Military Learners—and the Families Who Serve Alongside Them

by Presidents Forum | Jun 29, 2026 | Outcomes and Accountability

By Meg O’Grady, National University

Today, more than 800,000 active-duty service members, reservists, and veterans are enrolled in higher education. Colleges and universities are increasingly paying attention to both the opportunity and the responsibility that come with serving this growing population. But within this community is another group whose education and careers are shaped just as profoundly by service: military spouses.

Military spouse unemployment constantly hovers around 20 percent and has been measured between 20-26% annually since 2021, far higher than the national average, and despite increased awareness and resources for both spouses and employers through a variety of both government, private sector and non-profit programs.

Higher education has an important role to play in closing this gap. Too often, however, conversations about military-connected student success stop with the service member. In reality, families move through the disruptions and transitions of military life together.

Supporting military-connected learners requires institutions to design for the full reality of military life. That includes their spouses.

Many military spouses pursue education in lieu of employment, when employment is not available, leading to a highly educated talent pool, more so than their civilian counterparts.

Military spouse employment is a national security imperative, providing financial stability for military families who often need a second income to meet basic needs and creating a stable environment when the military service member reenters civilian life post military.

Most of higher education does not reflect how these students live and learn. Colleges design systems for students who remain in one place, follow predictable academic calendars, and progress without interruption. Traditional degree programs too often rely on continuity that military life rarely provides for service members or their spouses.

As an Army veteran and military spouse who moved 17 times in 23 years, I have experienced both sides of this coin. In my role as Senior Vice President of Military Affairs at National University, I also see every day how military life shapes entire families, not just those in uniform.

More than five decades ago, a U.S. Navy captain founded National University to serve working adults and military learners. That mission continues to guide how we design programs, support students, and define success.

We structure our online programs in four- and eight-week courses to accommodate disruption. This format helps students continue their education even when circumstances change.

For military spouses, flexible pacing often determines whether they stop out or stay on track. Military orders create constant uncertainty, and many spouses take on primary caregiving responsibilities during deployments and training cycles.

Nearly 70 percent of active-duty military spouses have children, and 46 percent have children under age six. Two-thirds work full-time. Flexible online learning and course scheduling allow them to integrate education into their busy daily lives.

Transfer policies create another barrier. On average, military families relocate every two to four years. Military spouses move 3.6 times more often than civilian families, making it difficult to maintain continuous enrollment at one institution.

When institutions do not accept credits, students lose time, money, and momentum. Colleges can reduce these losses by building clear pathways, strengthening articulation agreements, and recognizing prior learning more consistently. These changes make it easier for military-connected students to continue their education across locations.

Affordability also impacts persistence. National supports military spouses through dedicated scholarships, including the Whisper Military Spouse Scholarship, as well as tuition discounts and access to transferred GI Bill benefits and the Department of Defense MyCAA funding. These combined supports help reduce the financial strain that can come with the frequent moves and disrupted employment coming among military families.

Access and completion alone do not guarantee success, however. Military spouses invest significant time, effort, and resources in their education, and that investment must lead to meaningful employment.

Too often, a degree does not translate into a job. It’s critical for colleges to align degree programs with in-demand professions and skills. Stronger partnerships with employers, career coaching, and job placement support can all help students convert their credentials into career opportunities.

Since 2022, National University has been a proud MSEP partner, joining 950+ employers committed to recruiting, hiring, and retaining military spouses in sustainable careers. We collaborate on job fairs, post opportunities through the MSEP portal, and educate hiring managers on the unique value military spouses bring. This reflects our broader commitment to creating economic security and opportunity for military-connected students. Through our Military Spouse Scholarship Program and MyCAA Scholarship support, eligible spouses receive up to $4,000 for education in portable career fields. In 2025, through a VA Veteran and Spouse Transitional Assistance Grant, National University partnered with San Diego County organizations — including the San Diego Cyber Center of Excellence — to place 407 veterans and spouses into family-sustaining jobs.

Strong advising connects these efforts. Our Veteran and Military team provides a centralized hub for service members, spouses, and dependents navigating benefits, academic decisions, and career transitions.

The team also delivers targeted career-readiness programming, so far supporting more than 1,500 military-connected students and their spouses with hands-on training and job placement assistance. Military spouses navigate the same higher education system as service members and face many of the same structural barriers.

Their success is just as critical to the stability and economic security of military families as their partners’. Yet they remain largely overlooked, even within institutions that focus on military learners.

If colleges want to improve outcomes for military-connected students, they need to widen the lens. That means building systems that better support not just the individual in uniform, but the family that serves alongside them.

« Older Entries