Designing Higher Education Around Human Connection
Higher education is being asked to solve one of its greatest challenges yet.
Students deserve more personalized support than ever before. Colleges and universities are serving increasingly diverse learner populations, navigating financial pressures, embracing new technologies and finding ways to support more students without losing sight of the individual.
For many institutions, it has created an understandable tension. How do we create one-by-one connections while also operating at scale?
I don't believe these goals are in conflict. In fact, I believe the future of higher education depends on our ability to strengthen both.
More Than Information
For decades, institutions have worked to provide students with the information, resources and services they need to succeed. Yet every institution knows that data by itself does not always translate into action.
Students may know they need to complete financial aid paperwork. But then what? How do they talk to the financial aid office? What do they do next? How do they build the confidence to advocate for themselves and navigate the conversations that move them forward?
What they often need is someone who can help them navigate what comes next, and that’s how I think of mentoring. Not as someone who takes over a student’s journey, but as a co-pilot. Someone who helps students make sense of competing priorities, asks better questions, and helps chart a path forward when life becomes more complicated than a checklist can solve.
Sometimes what appears to be an academic challenge is actually a work schedule that suddenly changed, a childcare issue, a financial setback or the loss of someone they love.
Those moments rarely appear on a dashboard. They emerge through conversations. They emerge because someone asked an open-ended question instead of a transactional one. They emerge because a student felt comfortable enough to say to a person what isn't an obvious data point.
Some of the most important things we learn from students are not the answers they give. They are the concerns they were hesitant to share until someone took the time to ask.
That is why I believe student success is fundamentally about our relationships with our students.
Human-Centered, Tech-Enabled
Nearly 30 years ago, WGU made a commitment that every student would have a dedicated mentor to support them throughout their educational journey. Today, that commitment remains unchanged, even as the university serves more than 195,000 students supported by more than 2,000 mentors.
Higher education has changed dramatically during that time. Technology has evolved. Student demographics have shifted. Learners balance increasingly complex responsibilities outside their studies. Yet our commitment to human connection has remained constant because our students continue to tell us it matters.
In a recent WGU Labs survey of nearly 1,000 WGU students, 78% say the guidance they receive from their mentor is personalized to their unique circumstances, and 86% say their mentor is very or extremely effective in addressing their needs. Those results remind us that personalization is not simply about delivering the right information. It's about building relationships that help students navigate their individual circumstances.
Again and again, our WGU graduates describe their mentor as the person who helped them keep moving when life became overwhelming. Not because the mentor solved every problem, but because someone knew them, believed in them and helped them navigate that next step.
That sense of connection creates something every institution is striving to build: belonging.
Automating the Transactional
Students who feel seen and understood are more likely to remain engaged, ask for help, and persist when challenges arise. Belonging is not created by a single orientation session or welcome email. It is built one conversation at a time.
This is also why I believe conversations about artificial intelligence in higher education deserve a more balanced perspective. AI will transform our work, and that's a good thing.
AI tools can reduce administrative burden, surface insights more quickly, automate repetitive tasks and help us identify students who may need support earlier than ever before. Higher education should embrace these opportunities.
But we should also be intentional about what technology is meant to do. Technology should automate the transactional so people can spend more time on what only people can do.
Technology can identify patterns. People build trust.
Technology can generate reminders. People inspire confidence.
Technology can summarize conversations. People hear the unsaid.
When we use technology to remove administrative work, we create more capacity for empathy, coaching and meaningful conversations. It’s not a replacement for human connection, but rather an investment in it.
The challenge before higher education is not to decide whether technology or people matter more. It is designing systems where each makes the other stronger. This work requires us to be intentional. It requires institutions to think differently about student support — not as a collection of disconnected services, but as a unified experience that helps students navigate both college and life.
As colleges and universities continue exploring new technologies, I hope we resist the temptation to measure innovation solely by efficiency. Our greatest innovations should also strengthen belonging, deepen relationships and help every student feel known.
In a world where information has never been more accessible, students don’t simply need another source of answers. They need trusted relationships and supportive mentors who can help them navigate uncertainty, stay connected to their goals and remain confident that they don’t have to make the journey alone.
