State of Engagement
in Higher Ed
A full academic year of real student messaging across 109 community and technical colleges: 10.7 million recipients, 646,423 conversations. Not surveys. Not self-reports. What students and staff actually did.
Get the 2026 Benchmark Reportin Higher Ed
Five things this report answers
Why the sector was never staffed for this
Caseloads run 441:1 nationally, and past 1,000:1 at many colleges. Shared inboxes carry up to 4,000+ students at the busiest.
What actually makes a student reply
Asking a question lifts reply rates 3.6x, and Smart Messages outperform standard outreach 4.6x, the biggest single lift in the report.
What students message about most
Registration and holds top the list at 15.6%. Communication issues and financial aid go unresolved most often.
How much demand arrives after hours
17.2% of messages land before 8 a.m., after 5 p.m., or on weekends. Web Chat data tells a similar story about after-hours engagement.
What it means for staffing, not just tactics
Why the gap between demand and capacity is structural, and what the data suggests about closing it without more hires.
Key findings from the report
“Your team didn’t fail. The math never worked.”
The hours students reach out have never matched the hours staff can answer, and no institution can hire its way across that gap. This report shows what the data says instead.
See the full data behind community college engagement in 2026
Caseloads, message timing, unresolved topics, and Web Chat performance, benchmarked against 109 community and technical colleges.
Download the 2026 Benchmark Report