Engaging students early, on their terms
Zac Ashkanasy
Principal, Nous Group
AUSTRALIA
zac.ashkanasy@nousgroup.com
Theme 1
Rethinking
Student Success
Nous is undertaking research into what it takes to improve student success across the whole institution.
The full report will be released
in early 2027.
Student success is produced by the whole institution, but many institutions still manage it as a collection of services and functions. Teaching, curriculum, student support, systems, and services all shape whether students thrive.
Yet responsibility remains divided across portfolios, budgets, and reporting lines. Improving outcomes takes more than adding services or individual initiatives. It requires institutions to think about how all these parts work together around shared outcomes and accountability.
At the same time, delivering student success is becoming harder:
The ‘typical student’ is now the exception.
Work, caring responsibilities, financial pressure, and uneven academic preparation shape how many students study, while many timetables, support models, and processes still assume otherwise.
The credential alone no longer ensures value.
Students need to see how learning builds capabilities, identity, and pathways they could not secure as readily elsewhere. Our student survey found that a quarter of students do not agree that their degree will be worth the cost.
Financial pressure makes institutional incoherence unaffordable.
Funding is by far the greatest barrier identified by staff. Institutions can no longer afford duplication, weak hand-offs, and initiatives whose effects are unknown.
Students experience one institution, but accountability follows the organisation chart.
A student’s problem can cross teaching, assessment, wellbeing, finance, and administration, but no one necessarily owns the outcome across those boundaries.
Student success is a whole-of-institution responsibility
That matters because the idea of student success itself is becoming broader. When we ask staff and students what student success means, their answers range from employment outcomes and skill development to personal growth, academic attainment, and a positive student experience. A broader idea of student success brings with it a broader question: who is responsible for delivering it?
Early insights from the research
Our research is exploring what a more joined-up approach to student success could look like across seven themes.
Below, we share a glimpse of what we’re learning in each.
Bridging the divide between academic and student services
THEME 2
Preparing students for a rapidly changing world of work
THEME 3
Redesigning learning in an age of AI
THEME 4
From fragmented data to coordinated action
THEME 5
Designing services around students
THEME 6
Investing in what works
THEME 7
Engaging students early, on their terms
Dropout risk emerges early and affects some student cohorts far more than others. To prevent it, institutions need to build transition into the educational model and ensure clear institutional responsibility for proactive engagement.
Retention risks are common, arise early and compound disadvantage.
Attrition is one of the most serious consequences of a poor student experience, and many departures are preventable. Our student survey found that more than one-third of students (34 per cent) had considered not completing their studies. Nearly half of these students (47 per cent) first considered leaving early in their degree. Wellbeing and mental health concerns were the most common driver in every jurisdiction.
Risk is not evenly distributed. It is higher among students with disability, LGBTQ+ students, Indigenous students, first-in-family students, and students studying online or by distance. These are often the students least able to absorb the financial and personal costs of leaving. Experience matters as much as cohort: as students’ overall rating of their experience falls, their reported likelihood of dropping out rises.
Build transition into the education model. More than 30 per cent of students did not feel well prepared for at least one aspect of study. A first semester built around belonging, clear expectations, and early academic milestones matters.
Make proactive outreach an institutional responsibility. Leaders identified fragmented pathways and passive referral as a weakness and called for better coordination. Some universities have introduced student success officers or coaches, but these often focus on triage, referral, or a single outbound contact.
Fund the response. Leaders described disconnected data, inconsistent teaching practices, and unclear responsibility after a student is flagged. Universities do not lack risk indicators but many lack reliable processes for acting on them. Institutions should fund the responses and judge success by resolved cases and improved outcomes.
Early outreach is decisive
1
3
2
Effective early intervention takes more than earlier or better-targeted outreach. Institutions need to redesign the machinery around it. Three conclusions stand out from our interviews:
Proportion of students who have considered not finishing, by demographic cohort (Student survey).
Bridging the divide between academic
and student services
Quality teaching and learning are core drivers of student success.
Institutions increasingly treat academic and student support as one ecosystem, but integration does not happen automatically. A range of different models can help bridge this long-standing divide.
A poor academic experience nearly doubles dropout risk. Staff have noticed, too: ‘Teaching and learning’ as an investment priority has risen 18 percentage points since 2023. Feedback remains a weak point. Only 54 per cent of students say they frequently or very frequently receive feedback that helps them improve.
Reframe support as central to education, not as a safety net for struggling students.
Design roles that span traditional boundaries which sit inside academic communities, not alongside them
as parallel structures.
Build a shared narrative, accountability, and capability among academic and student support leaders.
Almost a quarter of staff (23 per cent) name a ‘disconnect between academic and support services’ as a top barrier to delivering an outstanding student experience. Leading institutions are moving support from the edges towards where students learn. Three ingredients are essential to integration:
Quality teaching and learning are core to student success.
Proportion of students who consider not finishing, by their rating of different student experience areas.
The academic-support divide undermines student success
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2
3
Preparing students for a rapidly changing world of work
Employment outcomes are the main driver of students’ study decisions and a significant factor in student retention. Delivering them is becoming structurally harder. Institutions are responding by making the employment proposition part of the curriculum itself.
Employment is the primary factor in students’ decisions about what and where to study.
From a generic employability strategy to a discipline-level value proposition.
From a placement near graduation to applied learning across the degree.
From slow course renewal to faster, more flexible pathways.
University leaders discussed three critical shifts to better embed employability within curriculums:
Employment opportunities drive decision making and student experience
Most important factors in choosing what and where to study.
Curriculum adaptation requires three deeper shifts
Redesigning learning in an age of AI
AI is rapidly reshaping student learning, and institutions are starting to catch up. The challenge is to make sure AI enhances, rather than diminishes, student learning and agency. This requires clear institutional direction, approaches tailored to each discipline, and a return to first principles.
Almost seven in ten students use AI in their own time at least occasionally to help with their learning, and over one-third use it frequently or very frequently. This varies considerably by field of study. Institutions are lagging behind. Even so, the conversation has shifted. AI is no longer seen only as a risk to police; it is seen as a capability to teach. The challenge for institutions is to ensure that AI enhances – rather than diminishes – student learning and agency.
Explicitly building AI into curriculums to ensure responsible, ethical and critical use of the technology.
Redesigning assessment to ensure integrity of learning outcomes while acknowledging widespread use.
Developing custom AI platforms and tools that enhance student learning.
Tailoring AI approaches by discipline with a common institutional direction.
Ensuring that the AI response is underpinned by a clear conception of the purpose of higher education.
Institutions are responding in a variety of ways to the challenge of AI. Promising approaches include:
Institutions are catching up as AI reshapes student learning
AI use by students and institutional responses (student and staff surveys).
Using AI to strengthen student learning and agency
From fragmented data to coordinated action
Student data is a critical but underused asset. Institutions rarely lack data, but they struggle to translate it into insight and action. Opportunities go beyond identifying risks to enabling success.
Institutions collect extensive data on academic performance, attendance, participation, and service use.
The harder task is turning it into decisions. Staff rank ‘using data to act on student needs’ among the most effective ways to improve the student experience. Yet around one-third say their institution does not use student analytics well to design initiatives. Only two-thirds of students agree that difficulties are identified and addressed early. More dashboards can simply shift the burden of interpretation onto time-poor staff. Greater value comes from embedding a small number of trusted, role-specific performance indicators into workflows.
While many institutions use data to inform early interventions for at-risk students, some emphasise a more positive role for data as a vehicle to improve student outcomes, such as identifying opportunities for students and supporting continuous, evidence-based improvement of services.
Recognising the limits to what data measures, and pairing data with the student voice, to tell a more complete story.
As institutions get better at collecting and connecting data, they face harder questions. How much should they know about students to support them effectively? How much detail is useful, proportionate, and actionable? Leaders point to multiple challenges:
The data gap is between insight and response
Proportion of staff who rate certain approaches as top 3 most effective to improve student experience.
Ensuring that data does not direct attention away from issues that are less directly measurable
Using student data to anticipate needs and enable success, without creating a culture where students feel surveilled rather than supported.
Designing services around students
Students carry too much of the burden of navigating fragmented supports. Services that truly centre on students need more than better technology. They combine simpler processes with trusted human relationships and give students a direct role in shaping services.
Institutions are organised around functions, but students experience one institution. A single problem can touch several functions. When services are not connected, students have to connect the dots themselves. That burden falls hardest on those with the least time, confidence, or familiarity with how institutions work. This may be one reason that staff consistently rate services more highly than students do.
Process, technology and data improvements are the top approaches institutions are using to improve the student experience. The top priority investment areas among surveyed staff were a ‘fully integrated serviced platform’ and a ‘one-stop-shop student services centre’. Neither puts students at the centre by itself. A new interface placed over fragmented services moves the burden online instead of removing it.
Student success is not delivered through technology or people, but through how the two reinforce each other. Good digital design frees staff for the moments that need judgement and care. Trusted people are what make digital services work. This is reflected in our staff survey: human skills (such as communication and people skills) were rated the most important capabilities to deliver an outstanding student experience.
Navigating supports is burdensome for students
Staff vs students – rating effectiveness/experience of different student service categories.
Better processes and technology are necessary but not sufficient
Student partnership strengthens service design
More than one-quarter (27 per cent) of staff rate co-designing solutions with students among the most effective ways to improve student experience. But this
is a work in progress for many institutions. Only 4 per cent report that they partner with students to inform design and delivery of initiatives, while a further 27 per cent report that students are actively involved. Co-design works best when:
student experience is the relevant expertise
it is clear how student input will be used
participation reaches beyond the usual student representatives.
Investing in what works
Institutions largely agree on what matters for student success but have much weaker evidence about what makes a difference. With budgets constrained, the challenge is deciding what to scale, redesign or stop, and working to build a stronger evidence-base.
Staff broadly agree on investment priorities. Agreement on priorities does not settle the harder question of how to allocate limited resources. In the context of financial constraints, every new initiative is funded by something else that no longer is. The question for leaders is less "What matters?" and more "Which of the things we already do are making a difference, and which should we scale, redesign, or stop?"
The challenge is what to scale, redesign, or stop
Areas which will require the most financial investment to improve student experience, according to staff.
Higher education institutions collect extensive data on student experience, retention and service use. But our staff survey suggests that not many use it to test whether particular investments have worked. Only 41
per cent of staff say their institution formally measures ROI of student experience initiatives. A further 33
per cent measure ROI informally, and 9 per cent say they do not measure it at all. Good practices include:
defining the intended outcome, target cohort, and baseline before funding anything
adopting a shared outcome framework so investments can be compared
building evaluation into rollout, using phased implementation to create comparison groups
linking evaluation to the budget cycle so that decisions to continue, redesign, or stop happen routinely.
Building a stronger evidence base
This research builds on a broader body of global higher education research undertaken by Nous to support sector-wide learning and conversation. By sharing the experiences and perspectives of leaders from across the sector, this research aims to contribute practical insights that universities can use to inform strategy, policy, and practice.
Previous research
PREVIOUS STUDIES INCLUDE:
2026: University as a Connector 2026: The workforce needs universities to close the gap.
2025: On the precipice:
Sustainability in an age of uncertainty.
2024: Balancing mission and markets: The future of the higher education offer.
2023: From promise to pragmatism: Delivering a better student experience.
Get in touch to learn more
Mia Juritzen
DIRECTOR,
Nous Group
AUSTRALIA
mia.juritzen@nousgroup.com
Nathalie Mejia
DIRECTOR,
Nous Group
caNADA
nathalie.mejia@nousgroup.com
Minto Felix
director,
Nous Group
UK
minto.felix@nousgroup.com
Recognising the limits and pitfalls of data
