August 2026 - AACRAO

August 2026, Eye on Research

Commentary

Welcome to a new academic year. After our July pause, Eye on Research is back and looking forward to the 2026-2027 academic year.

“Pages 19 through 36”

This blog begins with a cautionary tale about artificial intelligence (AI) from the K-12 side of the house. On the first day of class at Farnsley Middle School in Louisville, a student opened his new AI-generated agenda and found a map of the United States. He was surprised to see Kentucky labeled as “Venecky,” Louisiana as “Lookoong,” Alabama as “Alotome,” Illinois as “Vitoiis” and South Carolina as “Sorth Cuanto.” The periodic table was also garbled, and the phases of the moon were unreadable.

After learning about these problems, two details stay with me. The errors were caught by a middle schooler within a single day, which tells you how shallow the review was. Administrators emailed teachers about “a LOT of mistakes” on pages 19 through 36 and told them to have students tear those pages out before carrying the agendas home.

This column has discussed AI in depth. In April we looked at what automation is doing to the labor market our learners are entering. In May we noted that employers ranked AI literacy last among the skills they want in new graduates. We know what AI tools can generate. The constraint is what we are willing to verify before it reaches a learner.

That should land close to home for our members as a whole and registrars in particular. Registrars certify transcripts, degree audits, articulation decisions and enrollment verifications. Each is an institutional assertion that something is true.

AACRAO’s own work this year has treated AI-assisted credit evaluation as a serious, promising practice. The LEARN Commission examined it directly. “Promising practice” is the correct term. Unreviewed is not. An error in a student planner can be torn out. An error in a degree audit may follow a learner for years. By the time anyone catches the error, the learner has already made decisions based on it.

None of this argues against using AI tools. I use them daily. However, it does make a case for being explicit about where the human sits.

Who reads the output before it becomes a record?
Who is accountable when it is wrong?
What is the correction path once an error reaches a learner?
What does it cost to walk it back?

Institutions that answer these questions before deployment will rarely find themselves “tearing out pages 19 through 36.”

We’d Like to Hear from You

My inbox is always open. If you have questions about our existing research or an idea you would like to see covered in future AACRAO research, please contact me at wendyk@aacrao.org.

Wishing you a smooth start to the fall term.

AACRAO Research Updates

Chief Enrollment Management Officer Career Profile

A slight change of plans. We will now deploy the Chief Enrollment Management Officer (CEMO) Career Profile survey in October, 2026. This will be the fourth iteration of this career profile series for the CEMO position. If you hold the CEMO position, please watch your inbox for this survey. We welcome and appreciate your participation.

We have been deploying this survey every 3 years since 2017. Moving forward, we will repeat the survey every 5 years.

Current Higher-Education Research and Related Topics

Higher Ed’s Big Restructuring

Inside Higher Ed released a special report examining four structural forces reshaping what colleges are, who they serve and what they need to do to stay relevant. The report leans into the idea of the “modern learner,” someone juggling work, family and school in ways traditional degree pathways weren’t built for. It’s a free download, and IHE is running a webcast on the findings on August 25, 2026.

The report covers many areas and:

Looks at how institutions are redesigning academic offerings under enrollment and policy pressure
Frames lifelong learning as a planning priority, not a side program
Fies the restructuring push to the financial and demographic strains colleges face
Supported in part by The Educational Software Company Modern Campus

The AI Tipping Point in Higher Education

Tyton Partners and D2L surveyed over 3,000 administrators, instructors and learners about AI use. Data collected revealed AI use in higher education has crossed a real adoption threshold. The report title “The AI Tipping Point: From Monitoring Students to Engaging Them” plays off the shift from monitoring AI use to building it into teaching.

Weekly AI use now exceeds 50% among those surveyed. Daily use is at its highest level since spring 2023. The report also flags a split among faculty. Those who redesign assessments around AI get a real edge on engagement compared to those who fall back on blue-book exams.

71% of administrators, 61% of learners and 52% of instructors report weekly AI use
Daily GenAI use hit 43% for administrators, 32% for learners, 25% for faculty
Faculty “Integrators” (24% of faculty) who redesign assessments show a 10+% edge in attendance over “Defenders” who revert to old formats

New Assessments Are Favored Over AI Detectors
A new article in Inside Higher Ed details a growing list of universities, including Yale, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins and Indiana University, that have banned or discouraged AI detection tools. Unreliability and bias against nonnative English writers were cited as the reasons.

Faculty are shifting toward assignment redesign, such as in-person exams, oral assessments and work that shows reasoning, rather than just a finished product. A recent national survey found 73% of faculty have personally dealt with AI-related academic integrity issues.

At least a dozen schools, including Northwestern, Georgetown and NYU, have disabled Turnitin’s AI detector over high false-positive rates.
Experts note “humanizing” tools that evade detection make the detection arms race largely pointless.
Instructors at University of Central Florida and the University of Mississippi are pushing peers toward redesigned assignments, though large lecture courses have less flexibility than small ones.
University of California San Diego’s academic-integrity director believes unsupervised written work no longer holds up as reliable evidence of learning.

Parents Are Deeply Involved in College Search, Anxious about Cost and Increasingly Worried About Jobs and Artificial Intelligence

EAB (Formerly known as the Education Advisory Board) surveyed 2,515 parents of high school learners to determine how they shape their child’s college search, then compared results against its 2022 and 2024 surveys. What has moved is anxiety about employability, mental health, and financial-aid clarity. A striking finding is that most parents want colleges to talk to them directly and don’t believe the outreach they get is useful.

64% of parents name cost as a top worry; 50% name school fit
Financial aid (41%), mental health (40%), and campus safety (34%) follow
Parents cite postgraduation job prospects as a top concern (16% in 2024 to 29% in 2026, an 81% jump)
71% want colleges to contact them directly, but 69% rate the information they receive as less than very helpful
More than 20% don’t recall receiving any direct communication
Household income predicts parental attitudes more closely than first-generation status
35% of parents who earn less than $90k a year are unsure how much they’d pay for college versus 11% who earn more than $150k
57% say AI helped them understand specific schools, though 35% are very, or extremely, concerned it erodes their learner’s critical thinking

Where Enrollment Stands as of Fall 2026

Niche surveyed 134 enrollment leaders in July and found 61% expect to hit their fall 2026 goals. That confidence drops to 50% at colleges with fewer than 2,000 learners. Smaller schools rely more heavily on campus visits and discounts to compete, though heavier discounting didn’t consistently translate into better outcomes. Enrollment leaders named brand recognition as their toughest unsolved problem.

Confidence gap–61% overall versus 50% at small colleges
Campus visits ranked the single most valuable recruiting tool, especially for smaller schools (92%)
22% of schools leaned on increased discounting and were less likely to hit their targets
30% of respondents cited brand recognition and differentiation as their greatest unsolved challenges

California State University’s Transfer Success Pathway

An article in Inside Higher Ed examines California State University’s (CSU) Transfer Success Pathway (TSP). It guarantees eligible community college learners admission to their chosen CSU campus and program if they meet requirements and transfer within 3 years of starting the program.

The program targets a persistent problem. Only about one in five community college learners who intend to transfer actually do so within 4 years.

More than 7,800 learners across California’s 116 community colleges have signed a TSP agreement since it launched in 2023.
The program pairs coordinated advising from both the community college and the California State University (CSU) campus, covering academic planning, financial aid and progress tracking.
Pasadena City College has enrolled more than 2,000 learners in the pathway since 2023.
Administrators say learners most often fall off the transfer track because they don’t know what’s required.
Learners can sign a TSP agreement each year between August 1 and October 31 through the CSU Transfer Planner tool.

College Learners Mostly Positive About Leaders’ Actions

Gallup and the Lumina Foundation surveyed enrolled college learners and found most trust their institution’s leadership more than they trust state or federal policymakers, even as confidence in higher education has slipped among the general public. Data digs deeper into the partisan and institutional-prestige splits.

Fifty-five percent of learners believe their college leadership acts in learners’ best interests “all” (12%) or “most” (43%) of the time; 35% say “some of the time” and 11% say “rarely” or “never.”
Republican learners trust their institution’s leadership the most (62%), ahead of Democrats (55%) and independents (50%).
Republicans are far less confident in higher education nationally.
Learners from the top 100 national universities, as rated in the U.S. News and World Report, report less trust in their leadership than learners elsewhere.
Learners approve of their college leadership’s decisions (79%) far more than state (56%) or federal (45%) policy decisions.
Republicans approve of federal policy at a higher rate (70%) than Democrats (36%) or independents (38%).

Historically Black Colleges and Universities Continue to Impact STEM Achievement

The United Negro College Fund’s Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute published an update to its 2019 analysis documenting how Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) continue to outperform their size in producing STEM talent. The report leans on 2022-23 IPEDS data and pairs its findings with policy asks around HBCU funding and Pell Grants.

HBCUs make up 3% of U.S. higher education institutions but produced 16% of STEM degrees earned by Black graduates and 10% of STEM Ph.D.s overall.
HBCUs are 9% of 4-year bachelor’s-granting schools, yet they enrolled 23% of Black undergraduates pursuing bachelor’s degrees and awarded 28% of STEM bachelor’s degrees earned by Black learners.
The report calls for fully funding the Strengthening HBCU Program, backing the HBCU IGNITE infrastructure bill and doubling the maximum Pell Grant to at least $13,000.

The Student Loan-Debt Balance Is Falling, but Delinquency Remains

The New York Fed’s quarterly Household Debt and Credit Report shows student-loan balances dipped slightly in Q2 2026, while the picture on delinquency got more complicated. The bank examined ongoing distortions in how defaulted student debt gets re-reported to credit bureaus, which is muddying the numbers.

Student loan balances fell by $7 billion to $1.65 trillion, one of only two debt categories to shrink this quarter.
The share of student debt flowing into serious delinquency (90+ days late) dropped from 12.88% a year ago to 7.83%, largely a reporting artifact rather than a sign borrowers are catching up.
In comparison, total household debt dipped $13 billion (0.1%) to $18.8 trillion, with auto and credit-card balances still climbing.

College Reputation, Cost, and Salaries No Longer Align

An article in Forbes, drawing on this year’s Chronicle of Higher Education Almanac, pulls out data points showing how little prestige, price, and spending actually track together across colleges in the United States. The author is candid that these cherry-picked oddities are meant to surprise. They are not a systematic argument.

College of the Ozarks, a tuition-free work-study school, ranks as the 10th most selective baccalaureate college in the country by admissions data.
Purdue Global puts 20% of tuition revenue toward instruction. Elite research universities spend far more per tuition dollar on teaching.
Western Governors University now enrolls over 210,000 learners, nearly double Grand Canyon University’s online program.
Only 38% of all U.S. college learners attend doctoral-granting institutions.
Pay gaps run wide. Some small colleges report average staff salaries under $13,000 a year, while the highest-paying schools for management salaries average roughly $300,000 per employee. This data includes staff, faculty, and administrators across the institution.

International Learner Enrollment Set to Drop Sharply this Fall

New research by NAFSA and research firm JB International projects a steep drop in international enrollment this fall, driven by visa delays, a new travel ban and a rule change ending “duration of status.”

Enrollment could fall by over 110,000 learners, a 9.5% drop. This drops the total international-learner enrollment to roughly 1.05 million for 2026-27.
The decline is projected to cost the U.S. economy $3.4 billion and nearly 40,000 jobs.
Common App data show a 9% year-over-year drop in applications from abroad, with sharper declines from Ghana, Nigeria and India.
The report names visa appointment backlogs and new travel restrictions as the main drivers.

Families Spent 10% More on College this Year, but Still Call It Worth It

Sallie Mae and Ipsos surveyed 1,000 learners and 1,000 parents in spring of 2026 for their 19th annual look at how families cover college costs. Spending increased, but most families still see the investment as worthwhile.

Families spent an average of $34,019 on college in 2025-26, up 10% from $30,837 in 2024-2025.
Income and savings covered about 50% of the costs, with scholarships and grants covering 27% and borrowing 22%.
Ninety-one percent of families still call college a valuable investment; 89% believed they had chosen the correct school. 84% feel confident about the way that they paid for it.
Most families who skipped scholarships never applied for one.
Only 25% of families knew FAFSA opens in October.

Tuition Caps Don’t Always Keep Prices Down

University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Taylor Odle and University of Southern California Ph.D. student Salome Otero studied how Tennessee’s tuition-range policy played out at public colleges. They found price controls didn’t work the way policymakers intended.

Public universities generally raised in-state tuition to the top of the allowed range.
Community colleges held in-state tuition steady but raised out-of-state tuition and fees.
Some schools cut institutional grant aid, which could hurt learners the policy was developed to help.
The authors believe measured approaches, like tuition ranges paired with public investment, beat blunt tuition freezes.

Learner Parents Are Dropping Out–It’s a Workforce Problem

In an opinion article in Fortune magazine, Enyi Okebugwu, a program manager at Imaginable Futures, states that colleges, child-care systems and workforce programs all fail learner parents in ways that cost the broader economy skilled workers. She frames addressing this as the most direct fix for the talent shortage and lays out where higher education, employers and states can act.

Nearly 20% of college learners, about 3 million people, are raising children while enrolled, but only 18% of those learners earn a degree within 6 years.
Community college parents with access to on-campus child care graduated or transferred at nearly three times the rate of those without the same access (41% versus 15%).
A 2026 New America/Trellis Strategies survey found many caregiving learners who moved due to unaffordable or unsafe housing didn’t know they could ask their school for more aid. Few who asked for it received it.
States like Georgia and Oregon have linked child-care access to college persistence.
Maryland, Virginia and New Mexico are beginning to collect data on learner parents to guide funding.

Almost No One Believes 4-Year Colleges Are Affordable, but Parents Still Want the Degree

Gallup and Lumina surveyed roughly 3,000 U.S. adults in June, 2026. They found affordability is the lowest-rated attribute of 4-year colleges, ranking below quality, workforce prep and free speech. The gap barely shifts across age, race or party, which is a rare point of consensus in a poll that otherwise splits sharply along political lines.

Only 12% of adults rate 4-year colleges as excellent or good on affordability, versus 63% who call them poor; 2-year colleges score much better on this measure (54% positive).
Democrats and Republicans agree colleges are unaffordable but disagree on who should fix the problem; 87% of Democrats want the federal government involved versus 40% of Republicans.
Despite complaints about cost, 75% of parents still want their child to pursue some path after high school, with a 4-year degree the top pick (38%).
Among parents who don’t want a 4-year path for their child, cost is the dominant reason, cited by 33% in an open-ended question.

When Learners Who Look Ready Still Fail: A New Look at Dual Enrollment

In a working paper from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, researchers tracked 1.74 million California public high school learners to see who failed dual-enrollment courses and what that failure actually cost them. They found something they call the “preparation paradox.” Being academically ready doesn’t protect low-income learners from failing, though failing still surpasses never trying at all.

Socioeconomically disadvantaged learners fail dual-enrollment courses at higher rates than their peers at every achievement level. The gap widens as achievement increases.
Among the most prepared learners (90th percentile), disadvantaged learners fail 58% more often (10.2% versus 6.5%).
Failing a course cuts a learner’s odds of enrolling in college within 18 months by about 12%. This penalty held equally across income groups.
Learners who attempted dual enrollment and failed still enrolled in college at higher rates than similar learners who never enrolled in these courses (a roughly 6% advantage). The benefit held across income groups.
The authors believe the real problem is unequal access to nonacademic supports (advising, time, money) that cause capable low-income learners to fail. Tightening eligibility requirements would likely target the wrong learners.