Stevens Strategy

Stevens Strategy We are a full-service consulting firm specializing in managing the process of strategic change at co

Stevens Strategy is a full-service management consulting firm specializing in managing the process of strategic change at higher and secondary education institutions. We will be the firm colleges, universities and schools call when they must make critical decisions about their future.

Just the Facts: Sallie and Ipsos’s How America Pays for College 2026 examines how undergraduate students and families ar...
08/25/2026

Just the Facts: Sallie and Ipsos’s How America Pays for College 2026 examines how undergraduate students and families are financing higher education.

Based on online interviews with 1,000 undergraduate students and 1,000 parents of undergraduate students, the report shows a familiar tension. Families continue to see higher education as valuable, but cost is shaping where students apply, where they enroll, and how families assemble the funds to pay. Additional insights include:

🔶 Families reported spending an average of $34,019 on college during the 2025-26 academic year, up from $30,837 the previous year. At the same time, 52% of families said they paid less than the full advertised sticker price.

🔶 Families are using a mix of resources to cover costs. Income and savings covered 49% of college costs, followed by scholarships and grants at 27%, parent and student borrowing at 22%, and contributions or gifts from family and friends at 2%.

🔶 College value remains strong in family decision-making. Ninety-one percent of families view higher education as a valuable investment, 84% are confident they made the right financial decisions to pay for it, and 89% reported confidence in their school choice.

🔶 Cost is still narrowing the choice set. Nearly eight in 10 families, 79%, said they eliminated a school based on cost during the decision-making process. Families weighed price, proximity to home, and academics almost evenly when choosing a school.

🔶 Planning and aid awareness remain uneven. Fifty-eight percent of families created a plan to pay for all years of college before enrolling. While 74% completed the FAFSA and 81% of those families found the process easy, only 25% knew the FAFSA opens in October. Among families who did not use scholarships, nearly three out of four did not apply at all.

The data points to a practical enrollment challenge. Families are not walking away from the idea of college, but they are making sharper financial decisions earlier in the process.

Just the Facts: NACE’s article, Nearly Half of 2026 Grads Had a Job Offer Before Graduation Day, examines early employme...
08/21/2026

Just the Facts: NACE’s article, Nearly Half of 2026 Grads Had a Job Offer Before Graduation Day, examines early employment outcomes for the Class of 2026.

Based on NACE’s 2026 Student Survey, conducted from March 12 to May 15 with more than 17,000 students across 258 colleges and universities, the findings show a job market that is active, but more restrained than the post-pandemic hiring surge. Additional insights include:

🔶 More than two in five 2026 bachelor’s degree graduates, 44%, had at least one job offer before graduation. Across the graduating senior respondents, students averaged 0.79 job offers before completing their degree.

🔶 The 2026 results are similar to the Class of 2025, but remain below the pace seen in 2022 and 2023, when graduates benefited from the stronger post-pandemic hiring rebound.

🔶 Graduating seniors remain cautiously optimistic. Overall, 56% said they were optimistic about their job prospects after graduation, even as early offer activity has not returned to the levels seen in the immediate post-pandemic period.

🔶 Paid internships continue to matter. Among students who participated in a paid internship and applied for a job, 55% received at least one offer. Paid interns with job offers also reported a higher average starting salary, $69,521, compared with $61,747 overall.

The findings reinforce the role of career preparation as a core part of the student value proposition. Internships, applied experience, skill translation, and employer engagement are not add-ons to the academic experience. They increasingly shape whether students can turn a degree into an offer before graduation.

For institutions, the work begins earlier than the senior year. Students need help connecting classroom work, campus employment, part-time jobs, internships, and extracurricular experiences to the skills employers are evaluating.

Just the Facts: Gallup and Lumina Foundation’s latest State of Higher Education Study examines how currently enrolled co...
08/20/2026

Just the Facts: Gallup and Lumina Foundation’s latest State of Higher Education Study examines how currently enrolled college students view the decisions made by campus leaders and government policymakers.

Based on 3,801 responses from associate and bachelor’s degree students, the findings show that students are more positive about their own college leadership than the broader public narrative around higher education might suggest. At the same time, a meaningful share of students still express reservations about whether institutions consistently act in their best interests. Additional insights include:

🔶 Fifty-five percent of college students say their institution’s leadership acts in students’ best interests all or most of the time. Another 35% say leadership does so some of the time, while 11% say rarely or never.

🔶 Student trust does not follow the same partisan pattern seen in the broader public. Among current students, 62% of Republicans say their institution’s leadership usually acts in students’ best interests, compared with 55% of Democrats and 50% of independents.

🔶 Government policy is also shaping the student experience. Nearly six in 10 students say their campus has been changed a great deal or a moderate amount by state or federal policies. Among students at top-100 national universities, that share rises to nearly seven in 10.

🔶 Students rate campus leadership more favorably than government policymakers. Nearly eight in 10 students approve of policies and proposals implemented by their college leadership, compared with 56% approval for state policies and 45% approval for federal policies among students who say those policies have affected their campus.

The findings offer a useful counterweight to the broader decline in public confidence in higher education. Students are not uniformly skeptical of their institutions. Many still believe their campus leaders are making decisions with students in mind.

For institutional leaders, rebuilding confidence starts close to home. Clear decisions, visible student input, transparent communication, and follow-through on student-facing commitments may matter more than broad reputation campaigns.

Just the Facts: Strada Education Foundation’s article, Beyond the Average: The Uneven Geography of College ROI, examines...
08/18/2026

Just the Facts: Strada Education Foundation’s article, Beyond the Average: The Uneven Geography of College ROI, examines why the financial return on a bachelor’s degree varies so widely across states, regions, and demographic groups.

The article argues that average earnings and median income do not fully answer the question students and families are asking. A more useful measure is the likelihood that a degree will pay off for a specific student, in a specific place, in a specific labor market. Additional insights include:

🔶 Nationally, 69% of recent bachelor’s degree graduates see a positive 10-year return on investment. But the state-level range is wide, from 56% in Vermont to 82% in Washington, D.C. New York, California, Alaska, and Illinois are also among the states where graduates are most likely to see a positive ROI.

🔶 Geography is a major driver of outcomes. Bachelor’s degree holders in states with larger metropolitan concentrations are more likely to out-earn high school graduates in the same state. In Washington, D.C., 90% of bachelor’s degree holders earn more than their peers with a high school diploma. In Wyoming, the figure is below 70%.

🔶 The college earnings premium has weakened in many places. Between 2013 and 2023, the share of bachelor’s degree holders earning more than the high school median in their state declined in 37 states.

🔶 ROI also varies by race, ethnicity, and s*x. Compared with White and Asian peers of the same age and in the same state, Black and Hispanic college graduates are 5 to 10 percentage points less likely to out-earn the median high school completer. Female bachelor’s degree graduates of every race and ethnicity are also less likely than male graduates to do so.

The value of a bachelor’s degree remains real for most graduates. But this analysis makes it harder to talk about ROI as one national average.

That puts new pressure on institutions to understand graduate outcomes beyond aggregate salary data. Program-level outcomes, regional labor-market alignment, internship access, alumni location, employer relationships, and student support all shape whether a degree translates into economic mobility.

Stevens Strategy is pleased to congratulate Elizabeth Marsch on her appointment as Executive Director of Online Educatio...
08/17/2026

Stevens Strategy is pleased to congratulate Elizabeth Marsch on her appointment as Executive Director of Online Education at Manchester University.

This appointment marks an important step in Manchester University’s continued work to expand online learning, strengthen digital education, and build learner-centered programs that reflect the University’s mission and values.

Stevens Strategy was proud to support Manchester University in this search, helping identify candidates with the mix of online education experience, operational leadership, academic judgment, and mission alignment needed for the role.

Elizabeth brings more than 25 years of experience in higher education, with a strong record of building digital learning capacity across complex academic environments. Most recently, she served as Director of Distance Education at The Ohio State University, where her work included:

🔶 Supporting distance education and technology-enabled teaching across 38 departments and 20+ centers

🔶 Working with more than 1,500 faculty members to advance online and digitally enabled learning

🔶 Helping scale a distance education operation from 1 to 12 team members within four years

🔶 Supporting the development of 800+ quality-assured online courses

🔶 Advancing thoughtful, pedagogy-led AI integration, including the development of AI resources reaching 40,000+ unique visitors

🔶 Leading work across learning technologies, LMS optimization, accessibility, AI simulators, AI tutors, and operational dashboards

We are grateful to President Stacy Young and the Manchester University team for the opportunity to support this process, and we look forward to seeing Elizabeth’s leadership contribute to Manchester’s continued growth in online learning.

Congratulations, Elizabeth!

Just the Facts: Ithaka S+R’s report, Part Time, Full Potential, examines how colleges, systems, and policymakers can imp...
08/14/2026

Just the Facts: Ithaka S+R’s report, Part Time, Full Potential, examines how colleges, systems, and policymakers can improve outcomes for part-time learners.

The report argues that part-time students are not a marginal population. They represent about one-quarter of undergraduate students at four-year institutions and nearly two-thirds at two-year institutions, but complete credentials at roughly half the rate of full-time peers. Additional insights include:

🔶 Part-time enrollment is often shaped by constraint, not lack of commitment. The report identifies five characteristics that consistently differentiate part-time students from full-time peers: they are more likely to work full time, be adult learners, attend public two-year institutions, enroll exclusively online, and be parents.

🔶 The completion gap is substantial. Among students who began college in 2011-12, 65% of those who started part time returned the following year, compared with 86% of students who started full time. Across entering cohorts from 2008 to 2019, six-year completion rates for students who started part time ranged from 30% to 34%, compared with 60% to 68% for full-time starters.

🔶 The systems around students are still largely built for full-time attendance. Course schedules often prioritize traditional daytime patterns, support services are frequently offered during standard business hours, and 74% of institutions continue to schedule courses term by term, limiting students’ ability to plan around work and caregiving responsibilities.

🔶 Financial aid and credit policies are not well aligned with part-time students’ realities. Aid is often prorated by enrollment intensity, even though costs like housing, transportation, and dependent care do not fall proportionally. At the same time, only 11% of students use credit for prior learning despite its availability at 82% of institutions.

Part-time learners expose a structural mismatch in how many institutions are designed. Their barriers are often predictable: course timing, advising availability, aid eligibility, transfer rules, prior learning credit, and support services that assume students can organize life around college.

Just the Facts: AAUP’s Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2025-26 examines faculty compensation, ad...
08/13/2026

Just the Facts: AAUP’s Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2025-26 examines faculty compensation, administrator pay, part-time faculty pay, benefits, and the structure of the academic workforce.

The report’s central finding is straightforward. Faculty salaries rose in nominal terms, but not enough to keep pace with inflation. For colleges and universities, the data points to a wider workforce challenge involving purchasing power, compensation equity, contingent labor, and the growing gap between faculty and administrator pay. Additional insights include:

🔶 Average salaries for full-time faculty increased 2.3% from fall 2024 to fall 2025. Over the same period, the CPI-U increased 2.7%, resulting in a real salary decline of about 0.4%. For continuing full-time faculty, salaries rose 3.4% in nominal terms and 0.7% in real terms.

🔶 The longer-term picture remains strained. Real average full-time faculty salaries are about 9.5% below their fall 2019 level and about 5.8% below their fall 2008 level. In a matched-year comparison of 752 institutions, salary growth outpaced inflation at only 40.6% of institutions.

🔶 Salary gaps persist by gender and rank. Women made up 47.9% of full-time faculty overall in 2025-26, but only 37.8% of full professors. At the full professor level, women earned an average of $150,245, compared with $172,101 for men.

🔶 Part-time faculty compensation remains low. Among institutions reporting average pay for part-time faculty paid per course section, average pay was $4,093 for a standard three-credit course in 2024-25. Among institutions reporting minimum pay, the median minimum was $3,130, and 70% reported minimum pay of $4,000 or less.

The main issue is whether compensation is keeping pace with the cost of living, the demands placed on faculty, and the long-term role faculty are expected to play in sustaining academic quality.

That makes this more than an HR issue, as faculty compensation affects retention, morale, governance, program quality, student experience, and institutional reputation.

Just the Facts: Aspen Institute and CCRC’s report, Unlocking Opportunity: Progress Moving More Students Toward Good Jobs...
08/11/2026

Just the Facts: Aspen Institute and CCRC’s report, Unlocking Opportunity: Progress Moving More Students Toward Good Jobs, examines how community colleges can move more students into programs that lead to strong employment or transfer outcomes.

The report follows 10 pilot community colleges that together serve more than 170,000 students. These colleges classified programs by post-completion value, then redesigned advising, onboarding, transfer pathways, and workforce programs to shift more students toward high-value options. Additional insights include:

🔶 More than one-third of community college credentials are unlikely to lead directly to good jobs that pay living wages or to bachelor’s degrees that open doors to good jobs. The report argues that completion alone is no longer a sufficient measure of student success.

🔶 Between 2022 and 2025, the 10 pilot colleges increased enrollment in high-value pathways by 20,104 students, a 27% increase. This represented a 12% shift in total enrollment across the participating colleges.

🔶 Enrollment in low-value pathways declined by 7,648 students, a 25% decrease from the 2022 baseline. This included reductions in low-value workforce and transfer programs, as well as approximately 1,500 undecided students who moved into defined programs of study through redesigned advising and onboarding.

🔶 The gains were especially strong for students of color and lower-income students. Across these groups, enrollment in high-value programs increased by 17,451 students, a 40% increase from the baseline. The number of dual enrollment students on educational plans also increased by 6,719.

The central point is straightforward: community colleges cannot judge success only by whether students enroll or complete. The stronger test is whether students complete programs that actually lead somewhere.

That shifts the work from general access to guided access. Institutions need to know which programs lead to living-wage jobs, which transfer pathways preserve credits and lead to bachelor’s completion, and which students are being steered into pathways with weak outcomes.

Just the Facts: Gallup and Lumina Foundation’s latest Confidence in Higher Education survey shows that Americans continu...
08/07/2026

Just the Facts: Gallup and Lumina Foundation’s latest Confidence in Higher Education survey shows that Americans continue to see value in education after high school, but have deep concerns about the affordability of four-year colleges.

The article focuses on how U.S. adults rate four-year colleges across affordability, quality, workforce preparation, access, free speech, and discovery. The sharpest finding is that affordability is the one area where four-year institutions receive consistently poor marks across age, race, education level, and political party. Additional insights include:

🔶 Only 12% of U.S. adults say four-year colleges and universities are doing an excellent or good job providing an affordable education. Nearly two-thirds, 63%, say they are doing a poor job.

🔶 Americans rate four-year colleges more favorably on other measures: Fifty-three percent say they do an excellent or good job finding new discoveries, and 50% say the same about providing a quality education. The affordability problem is therefore not a general rejection of institutional performance.

🔶 Two-year colleges outperform four-year colleges on six of the seven measures Gallup tracks, including access, quality, affordability, and workforce preparation. On affordability alone, 54% of Americans rate two-year colleges positively, compared with 12% for four-year institutions.

🔶 About three-quarters of parents with children under 18 say they would prefer their child pursue education or training immediately after high school, including four-year college, two-year college, or a job-training or certification program.

The signal for higher education leaders is not that Americans have stopped believing in education after high school. They have not. The stronger signal is that the four-year model is losing ground on the issue that most directly affects access.

If the public still values postsecondary education, but sees four-year college as unaffordable, how clearly is your institution explaining the cost, the support, and the return?

Just the Facts: IIE’s Spring 2026 Snapshot on International Educational Exchange examines international student applicat...
08/06/2026

Just the Facts: IIE’s Spring 2026 Snapshot on International Educational Exchange examines international student application trends for U.S. colleges and universities, along with current trends in U.S. study abroad.

Based on responses from 585 U.S. colleges and universities collected between May 5 and June 11, the report offers an early read on the 2026-27 international enrollment outlook. The picture is mixed: international education remains strategically important, but the U.S. inbound pipeline is showing clear signs of pressure. Additional insights include:

🔶 Fifty-nine percent of responding institutions reported a decline in international student applications for 2026-27. Only 14% reported an increase, while 20% said application volumes were roughly the same as the prior year.

🔶 Institutions are expecting that application weakness to translate into enrollment pressure. Nearly two-thirds of respondents, 63%, anticipate a decline in international student enrollment for 2026-27, compared with 26% expecting stability and 11% expecting an increase.

🔶 The decline appears especially pronounced at the graduate level and in key source markets. Forty-three percent of institutions reported a substantial decline in graduate applications, compared with 31% at the undergraduate level. India stands out in particular, with 61% of responding institutions reporting declining application volumes from Indian students.

🔶 The barriers are not limited to student interest. Ninety-two percent of respondents cited visa processing issues as a significant factor affecting the enrollment outlook, while 80% cited travel restrictions, 77% cited increased competition from other destinations, and 64% noted increased questions or concerns about the U.S. political climate.

The signal here is not that international education is becoming less important. It is that the U.S. can no longer assume global demand will absorb policy uncertainty, visa friction, and stronger competition from other study destinations.

For institutional leaders, this makes international enrollment a strategic planning issue, not just a recruitment issue. Institutions that rely on international students fo

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