What's Working — and What's Not
The initiatives that produced statistically significant persistence outcomes, from a rigorous multi-year analysis of more than 220 programs.
2026 STUDENT SUCCESS IMPACT REPORT
Which Interventions Change Everything?
Now We Know.
Explore the top initiatives driving student persistence in 2026. This year's report delivers the most rigorous analysis of what actually works — and surfaces findings that will challenge what you thought you knew.
From Programs to Proof
In our annual Student Success Impact Report, we examine the initiatives our partner institutions have found most effective.
Using Prediction-Based Propensity Score Matching, a methodology designed to isolate what actually causes persistence improvements rather than simply correlating with them, we analyzed more than 220 student success initiatives across our partner network.
One finding rose to the top: precision matters more than volume. The institutions driving the strongest outcomes are not running more programs. They are running the right ones, for the right students, at the right time.
What's Inside
The AI Finding That Changes the Conversation
What the data says about how AI affects student persistence — and why the institutions seeing the best outcomes aren't using it the same way.
The Students Benefiting Most
Persistence outcomes broken down by student population — revealing where the right intervention at the right moment makes its most powerful difference.
The Human Factor Behind Every High-Impact Initiative
Why every high-impact initiative in this year's data has human judgment at its center — and what that means for how institutions are investing in 2026.
Top High-Impact Student Success Initiatives
In addition to multi-year trends, this year's report analyzed more than 220 student success initiatives to identify which ones produced measurable, reproducible improvements in student persistence.
2026 Report Insights
Advising and Outreach Remain the Highest-Leverage Interventions
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Advising appointments drove meaningful persistence lifts for students at both 2- and 4-year institutions.
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Student success outreach — when targeted and timely — produced sustained results, not one-semester spikes.
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The institutions seeing the strongest returns are the ones who know which students to reach, and when.
The AI Finding Every
Institution Needs to See
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AI tools deployed without human advisor involvement produced a measurable negative effect on student persistence.
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Institutions using AI to amplify advisor capacity — not replace it — saw meaningfully better outcomes.
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Institutions that deployed AI without human involvement saw a 6.8 percentage point drop in persistence. Those that kept humans in the loop saw meaningfully better outcomes.
Targeted Support for High-Need Students Outperforms Broad Programming
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Part-time students, transfer students, and high-risk students showed some of the highest persistence lifts when the right intervention reached them.
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Targeted support for the students who need it most outperforms broad programming in every category
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Aggregate numbers hide who is actually moving — this year's report breaks it down by population.
These findings are just the beginning
Download the full 2026 Student Success Impact Report for a deeper look at the initiatives, populations, and patterns driving measurable student outcomes across higher education.
