Only 29% of campus tech leaders say AI has met or beaten ROI.
For advising and support services, it drops to 13%.
The issue is pretty clear.
Quick Summary
Schools do not have an AI problem. They have an adoption problem. You can buy a cool tool, build your own, or stack five products for the sake of having more. It is all noise unless students use the thing. That is why the 13% advising stat matters so much. If AI were really working where guidance and support matter most, students would be engaging with it and schools would be seeing the return.
A lot of schools are still evaluating AI the wrong way. They are looking at the model, the demo, the feature list, or the fact that peers are buying something similar.
None of that tells you whether the product will work on your campus.
The real question is whether students will understand it, trust it, and come back when they need help again.
For Career Services Teams at Universities
Student adoption is the first ROI question.
If students do not use the product, the ROI never shows up. See how Prentus builds for clarity, trust, and repeat engagement so outcomes can follow.
The metric that actually matters
Schools do not need to ask who has the smartest AI. They need to ask whether students will use it.
That is the test. Not the feature dump. Not the flashiest demo. Not who says the words artificial intelligence the most times in a meeting.
- Will students understand this?
- Will this solve a real problem for them?
- Will they want to use it again?
That is where ROI comes from.
Why schools keep losing students in the experience
Too many campuses are giving students a maze of tools, logins, and disconnected experiences. Then they wonder why engagement is low.
One tool for enrollment. Another for advising. Another for career services. Sometimes five different places a student has to remember, interpret, and navigate on their own.
Students are not looking for more software. They are looking for clarity. They are looking for guidance. They are looking for something simple enough to trust and useful enough to come back to.
Students do not need AI for AI's sake. They need something that actually helps them move forward.
Adoption is the work
This is the part schools and vendors underestimate. Getting a student to actually use a product is hard. Getting them to keep using it is harder.
That takes design. It takes UX. It takes nudges, onboarding, timing, messaging, and constant iteration. It takes a team that understands engagement is not a nice-to-have metric sitting on a dashboard. It is the whole game.
That is what guides how we build Prentus. We are not trying to pile on more AI features. We are trying to create an end-to-end career outcomes platform students actually use.
If students do not engage, the ROI never shows up.
If you are exploring how AI could fit into your career services model, we would welcome the conversation.
