{"id":2143,"date":"2026-09-22T08:36:04","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T08:36:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/2026\/09\/22\/colleges-deploy-ai-to-boost-student-success\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T08:36:04","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T08:36:04","slug":"colleges-deploy-ai-to-boost-student-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/2026\/09\/22\/colleges-deploy-ai-to-boost-student-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Colleges Deploy AI to Boost Student Success Across Five Key Areas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<!-- Quick Adsense WordPress Plugin: http:\/\/quickadsense.com\/ -->\n<div class=\"9fece8afa224fd09e54b043d0febfb58\" data-index=\"1\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- NR ATF -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-8898941184964366\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"4839033563\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<p>Artificial intelligence is moving beyond classroom\u2011level tools to reshape the broader student experience on college campuses. Recent initiatives and research illustrate how institutions are using AI to identify at\u2011risk learners, understand emotional\u2011support habits, teach responsible tool use, provide hands\u2011on experimentation spaces, and ready graduates for an AI\u2011infused workforce.<\/p>\n<h2>AI\u2011Powered Early Alerts for Struggling Students<\/h2>\n<p>Students often exhibit subtle signs of difficulty before they stop attending classes or leave school altogether. Those signals are frequently scattered across multiple administrative systems, making it hard for staff to intervene early. Austin Community College (ACC) is testing a solution called the Digital Twin Initiative, a partnership with the Texas\u2011based Trellis Foundation. The nonprofit is providing an $875,000 grant to help ACC integrate real\u2011time student data from across its campus into a single AI\u2011driven platform.<\/p>\n<p>The system will generate a holistic view of each of the roughly 46,000 active credit students the college serves this fall. By connecting academic grades, attendance, financial aid status, and other data points, the AI aims to spot emerging barriers and route students quickly to tutoring, advising, mental\u2011health services, or basic\u2011needs assistance. ACC chancellor Russell Lowery\u2011Hart emphasized that while early\u2011alert systems already exist, AI can cut down the bureaucratic steps that delay help. &#8220;The grade goes in, the student gets notified and the student then immediately has options to schedule tutoring\u2026 Early alerts are a great step, but AI gives us an opportunity to remove a lot of the clunky bureaucracy,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<h2>Understanding Student Use of AI for Emotional Support<\/h2>\n<p>College mental\u2011health concerns are rising, and a new survey by Uwill, a digital mental\u2011health platform, sheds light on how students turn to AI for emotional assistance. Conducted by College Pulse in June, the study sampled 1,020 rising high\u2011school seniors and college seniors at four\u2011year institutions nationwide.<\/p>\n<p>Findings show that 26\u202f% of high\u2011school seniors use AI at least weekly to discuss relationships or emotional issues, more than double the 12\u202f% of college seniors who do the same. Only 41\u202f% of high\u2011school seniors rated their mental health as \u201cvery good\u201d or \u201cgood.\u201d Among those seniors who rely on AI, 21\u202f% said they do so because they \u201cdon\u2019t have anyone else to talk to,\u201d compared with 7\u202f% of college seniors. Additionally, 11\u202f% of high\u2011school seniors view AI as more supportive than friends, versus just 2\u202f% of college seniors.<\/p>\n<p>Uwill founder and CEO Michael London warned that colleges will need to address the growing reliance on AI as a substitute for trusted human support. &#8220;If a person says, \u2018I have nobody else I can talk to,\u2019 they\u2019re essentially saying there\u2019s nobody else I can trust. If that\u2019s true, and they want to just use AI for that, it\u2019s really troubling,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<h2>Teaching Responsible and Effective AI Use<\/h2>\n<p>Students themselves hold nuanced views on AI. Inside Higher Ed\u2019s Student Voice: Amplified survey of 1,038 two\u2011 and four\u2011year students found that while six in ten see AI\u2019s primary value as a learning support, four in ten worry about becoming dependent on the tools. Only 10\u202f% of respondents felt their institution was handling AI \u201cvery well,\u201d and a plurality (34\u202f%) described institutional efforts as inconsistent.<\/p>\n<p>When asked what they most wanted from their schools, 56\u202f% highlighted the need for instruction on using AI responsibly and effectively. Tawnya Means, founder of the consultancy Inspire Higher Ed and an AI adviser at Bowling Green State University, interpreted the data as a sign that students are paying close attention to how AI influences their thinking. &#8220;They\u2019re using the tools and getting nervous about the relationship,&#8221; Means said. She added that many institutions respond with vague policies or occasional workshops, which do not sufficiently address student concerns about dependency.<\/p>\n<h2>Hands\u2011On Experimentation Spaces<\/h2>\n<p>Santa Clara University has taken a different approach by creating a collaborative environment called the AI Kitchen. Launched in the spring, the weekly workshop invites roughly 50 participants\u2014including students, faculty, staff, and Silicon Valley professionals\u2014to test emerging AI tools across domains such as medicine, marketing, education, and real estate.<\/p>\n<p>Assistant professor of computer science and engineering Kai Lukoff explained that the \u201ckitchen\u201d metaphor was chosen to avoid the stereotypical \u201ctech bro\u201d vibe of many hacker spaces, which can deter women and underrepresented students. By keeping sessions \u201ccode\u2011light,\u201d the workshop encourages participation from diverse academic backgrounds, from anthropology majors to computer\u2011science students.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat I wanted to start with AI Kitchen is not just a course about AI literacy, but what one might call AI fluency,\u201d Lukoff said. He emphasized that fluency involves hands\u2011on ability to explore tool strengths, weaknesses, and real\u2011world applications, not merely theoretical understanding.<\/p>\n<h2>Preparing Graduates for an AI\u2011Infused Workforce<\/h2>\n<p>Artificial intelligence is also reshaping career preparation. Handshake\u2019s recent Class of What\u2019s Next report analyzed 12.4\u202fmillion U.S. candidate profiles from the classes of 2024 to 2030. The study measured AI\u2011related experience gained through coursework, projects, certifications, and other activities.<\/p>\n<p>One striking finding is that nearly two\u2011thirds of candidates with AI\u2011related experience are not computer\u2011science majors, indicating that AI skills are spreading across disciplines. The report underscores the growing expectation that graduates will need to demonstrate AI competence regardless of their primary field of study.<\/p>\n<p>Collectively, these initiatives illustrate a multi\u2011pronged effort by colleges to embed AI throughout the student lifecycle\u2014from early identification of academic risk to mental\u2011health support, responsible tool use, experiential learning, and workforce readiness. As AI continues to evolve, institutions will likely refine these strategies to ensure that technology enhances, rather than replaces, the human elements of education.<\/p>\n\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From early\u2011alert systems to AI\u2011driven workshops, colleges are using artificial intelligence to identify at\u2011risk learners, support mental health, teach responsible use, foster experimentation, and prepare graduates for an AI\u2011rich job market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[299],"tags":[231,2289,2291,2290,2292],"class_list":["post-2143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-higher-education","tag-mental-health","tag-student-support","tag-workforce-readiness","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}