The Future of Higher Education: Key Takeaways From Liaison’s 35-Year Insights Report

Stability is no longer a given in higher education. Today’s leaders are navigating converging forces that rarely move in sync: demographic contraction, technological acceleration, shifting public perception, and policy unpredictability. Taken together, these pressures are reshaping how institutions operate, think, plan, and lead.

For enrollment leaders and campus decision makers, this moment demands more than reactive adjustments. It calls for clarity, coordination, and strategies built to endure volatility.

Liaison’s new Insights Report, 35 Years of Navigating Change in Higher Education: Strategic Insights on What’s Next for Institutions, Students, and the People Who Support Them, reflects a perspective few others can offer. It distills decades of partnership with institutions, associations, and system leaders into an honest, forward-looking snapshot of where higher education stands and where it could go next. Drawing from internal experts with on-campus experience, the report delivers strategic insights informed by real-world challenges and lived professional judgment.

This blog offers a distillation of those findings. What follows are five essential takeaways that illuminate the future of higher education and provide actionable perspectives for anyone shaping its next chapter. As a contribution to ongoing higher education thought leadership, these considerations are designed to support meaningful planning, decision making, and collaboration across the enrollment community.

Across campuses, four forces are creating a new baseline of complexity:

• Demographic shifts are shrinking the pool of traditional college-bound students, with stark regional variation and rising expectations around value and flexibility.
• Financial strain continues to squeeze tuition-dependent models while public funding grows more erratic.
• Policy volatility, from FAFSA rollout challenges to skepticism about the benefits of earning a degree, adds layers of uncertainty to planning and communications.
• Technological acceleration is moving faster than many institutions can absorb, pushing teams to adopt new tools before alignment or readiness is in place.

In 2026, the rapid, overlapping nature of these challenges makes institutional planning especially complex. In previous eras, institutions responded to one disruption at a time. Now, volatility is layered. Planning cycles are shorter, decision making is more reactive, and leadership must adapt to a world where consistency is the exception, not the rule.

Together, these forces are redefining what it means to lead in higher education. The following takeaways—drawn from Liaison’s Insights Report—highlight the mindsets and strategies that can help institutions respond with clarity, resilience, and purpose.

Five-year plans once offered institutions a sense of direction. Today, that certainty is harder to come by. Enrollment leaders are recalibrating more frequently, often with fewer resources, shifting metrics, and increasing pressure to deliver results in a market that no longer follows predictable patterns.

Application trends, yield curves, and even campaign performance vary year to year in ways that challenge historical benchmarks. For many teams, this unpredictability has turned planning into an exercise in agility rather than projection.

Effective higher education leadership now depends on a different set of capabilities, rooted in flexibility, transparency, and alignment. The most resilient institutions are moving away from rigid frameworks and toward adaptable decision systems that prioritize mission over momentum.

These leaders:

• Anchor priorities in values, not just numbers.
• Embrace shorter, more responsive planning cycles.
• Rely on cross-functional input to guide fast-changing decisions.

A strong enrollment management strategy today centers on building flexible processes that can withstand shifting conditions. Institutions that invest in this kind of adaptability are better positioned to stay grounded and mission-aligned, even as external pressures intensify.

Behind every strategy sits a team responsible for carrying it out, and across higher education, those teams are under strain. Burnout, retirements, and departures to the private sector are reshaping institutional capacity in ways that go beyond staffing levels. Institutional memory, continuity, and the ability to sustain momentum across cycles of change are eroding.

Frequent turnover at the leadership level resets priorities before progress can take hold. Mid-level staff departures disrupt day-to-day execution. And in many cases, onboarding happens so quickly that alignment never fully catches up.

This instability has real consequences. Without shared context or consistent ownership, even well-designed initiatives stall. The student experience suffers when support systems feel fragmented, and digital transformation leadership becomes harder to execute when teams are already stretched thin.

Institutional resilience depends not only on tools or strategies but also on the people behind them. Leaders who recognize this are shifting focus toward practices that strengthen capacity over time by:

• Simplifying workflows so knowledge isn’t siloed.
• Pacing change initiatives to avoid burnout.
• Investing in shared understanding across roles and departments.

In a time defined by volatility, placing people at the center of institutional strategy has become a defining factor in long-term resilience.

Over the last decade, digital transformation in higher education has accelerated, but not always with strategy at the forefront. Many institutions now find themselves managing an array of disconnected tools, overlapping platforms, and vendor relationships that outpace internal alignment. The result is a growing disconnect between what technology promises and what it actually delivers.

The challenge is technology saturation. Tools adopted in urgency, especially during moments like the shift to remote learning, now compete for attention and ownership across departments. Platforms intended to streamline processes often introduce new friction when adoption outpaces training or governance.

This turning point has less to do with innovation itself and more to do with how decisions are made. Leaders increasingly recognize that sustainable progress requires prioritizing integration, intentional adoption, and shared value over novelty.

The institutions making meaningful strides in digital transformation are:

• Clarifying the problems they aim to solve before selecting solutions.
• Aligning procurement and adoption strategies across teams.
• Viewing implementation as an ongoing process, not a one-time event.
• Grounding every tech decision in how it supports students and staff.

Technology, when guided with clarity and collaboration, can reduce complexity. But without a cohesive strategy, even the most advanced tools risk becoming another layer of noise.

As institutions face shrinking teams and rising expectations, the conversation around AI in college admissions is shifting. Rather than asking what can be automated, enrollment leaders are asking where automation adds value, particularly in ways that support and extend human connection.

AI’s most effective role isn’t as a decision maker, but as an amplifier of human insight. When guided with care, AI supports more personalized outreach, timely intervention, and scalable engagement strategies that remain rooted in empathy.

Institutions using AI most effectively focus on:

• Surfacing insights that help staff understand each student’s needs.
• Detecting early signs of disengagement to prompt timely support.
• Enabling personalization at scale without sacrificing authenticity.
• Supporting equitable decision making with transparent, well-defined guardrails.

Today’s students expect both responsiveness and relevance. They’re quick to disengage from systems that feel generic or impersonal. AI, when used thoughtfully, helps institutions meet those expectations by creating space for advisors, counselors, and enrollment teams to focus on the work only humans can do: listening, guiding, and building trust.

The pace of innovation in higher education has outstripped many institutions’ ability to apply it effectively. Tools arrive faster than teams can implement them. Data lives in silos. Ownership gets blurred across departments. In this context, even well-intentioned digital initiatives can stall before they create impact.

What’s often missing is institutional readiness, defined by aligned goals, clear ownership, and the ability to implement change without overextending teams. Without these foundations in place, digital transformation in higher education struggles to take hold.

The institutions making measurable progress are taking an iterative approach. They:

• Identify a single high-impact area to start.
• Build internal clarity around purpose and process.
• Focus on adoption as a shared responsibility.
• Scale intentionally, guided by real results.

This shift toward right-sized implementation reduces friction and builds momentum. It turns enrollment management strategy into a living process that adjusts with conditions while remaining anchored in mission and measurable outcomes.

Higher education continues to change lives, and the future of higher education is being shaped by a generation of students who expect relevance, transparency, and meaningful connection. Their expectations are pushing institutions to design systems that work better for students, staff, and communities.

There’s also renewed momentum around collaboration. Institutions, associations, and vendors increasingly recognize that progress is collective. Meaningful, lasting change comes when leadership, infrastructure, and innovation evolve together, not in isolation.

And while AI and analytics bring new challenges, they also bring unprecedented opportunity. When applied thoughtfully, these tools can support earlier interventions, more personalized student journeys, and broader access to success.

Progress doesn’t require perfect conditions. It requires shared purpose, strategic clarity, and the willingness to evolve. That mindset is already reshaping what’s possible.

For 35 years, Liaison has partnered with institutions, associations, and enrollment leaders through every cycle of change, from policy shifts and economic disruptions to the rise of AI and the realities of digital transformation in higher education. Through it all, our focus has remained the same: strengthening institutional capacity through clarity, collaboration, and continuity.

Liaison delivers more than technology, investing in long-term partnerships built on shared goals and institutional alignment. Our work supports campus teams as they implement new tools in ways that reflect their mission, their people, and the students they serve.

Our work with professional associations and Centralized Application Services (CAS) has shown what’s possible when a shared vision drives innovation. As the next era of higher education leadership takes shape, Liaison remains committed to serving institutions so they can move forward with confidence.

Explore the full Insights Report here or connect with Liaison to dive deeper into the ideas shaping the future of higher education.