The shifting perception of higher education value
Higher education has an ROI problem.
It starts with a familiar scene. A rising high school senior is sitting in the kitchen with their parents, scrolling through different universities’ social media pages and websites, deciding where to tour. Not too long ago, students asked,“Can I get in?” or “Which school feels right?” Now, students and their parents are asking, “Will this be worth the time? The cost?” And even after the acceptance letter, when the family is facing the first expense, everyone’s wondering, “Is this actually worth it?”
These doubts don’t disappear after the decision to enroll but continue throughout the student life cycle. This is why the value of higher ed must now be explained outside the recruitment window, more clearly and more often. The value of a college degree is no longer assumed by students and their families, and institutions cannot prove it only during recruitment.
Higher education’s ROI crisis is a proof-of-value problem: Institutions must repeatedly connect the value of a degree to concrete evidence, support and progress across the full student life cycle.
Solving this trust and value problem requires connecting enrollment with brand, content and the lived student experience. Historically, these aspects have been fragmented. Bringing them together requires a more integrated approach. This is where the Pace and Swish partnership comes in. In merging our expertise as a content marketing agency with Swish’s expertise as a performance-focused media agency, we are able to connect strategy, content, media and optimization into one enrollment growth system for our clients.
What’s changed: Data and cultural context
The doubts families face at the kitchen table aren’t just theoretical—confidence in higher education has fallen in recent years. Conversations about college that used to be filled with excitement about choosing a school, finding a community and exploring new studies are now often burdened by uncertainty. Americans’ confidence in higher education has fallen from 57% in 2015 to just 38% in 2026, according to research from Gallup and Lumina Foundation.
The uncertainty is understandable. Costs are rising, and the decision cycle is becoming longer. Content creation can be a lucrative career, and AI is reshaping entry-level roles. All of it makes students wonder whether a college degree will even guarantee them a spot in the workforce.
This means that the recruitment window now begins with skepticism, rather than assumption. Before students consider a campus, they’re wondering whether higher education itself is worth it.
The challenge is significant for today’s higher education marketers. The current cultural climate requires leaders to think beyond the traditional boundaries of enrollment marketing. Proving value throughout the student life cycle means connecting performance and enrollment expertise with brand, content and storytelling—disciplines that too often operate separately.
That opportunity is what brought Pace and Swish together. Swish brings deep experience helping higher education institutions drive and measure enrollment performance. Pace brings expertise in building content and brand experiences that turn complex value propositions into relevant, human stories.
Together, we’re focused on helping institutions connect the promise that attracts a student with the experience that ultimately proves it. And doing that requires institutions to look beyond acquisition to consider how value is communicated and experienced across the entire student life cycle.
Why acquisition is too narrow
If the perceived value of higher education has shifted, then institutions cannot reinforce their value during recruitment alone.
The acquisition window is narrow. Institutions expect to build significant trust somewhere between a campus tour and the initial deposit. But it’s important to ask whether this system allows real trust to develop, the kind of trust a student needs when choosing the path that will shape the rest of their life.
This is why institutions cannot campaign their way out of a life cycle trust problem. Sure, recruitment can create interest, but it alone cannot carry confidence through every moment that follows. Students and their families evaluate an institution’s claims through many sources beyond the recruitment process, including peers, social circles, online reviews, alum stories and the experiences of current students.
If institutions want to create real trust, brand promise has to continue after the recruitment window. Every interaction either reinforces or weakens the value story students were promised during recruitment, from financial aid emails and orientation to advising appointments and career services.
Institutions that fail to shift their approach risk losing confidence. Reinforcing value is about more than recruitment; it’s about a sustained commitment to the student.
Persistence and retention as brand proof
The student experience that comes next either validates or undermines the promise made during recruitment.
The earliest test comes right after the deposit. “Summer melt” is the phenomenon of college-intending students who have applied to, been accepted by and made a deposit to a college or university but fail to formally enroll in the fall following their high school graduation. In the industry, marketers often reference summer melt as an early signal that confidence may be eroding under the combined weight of financial, logistical and emotional friction.
Across the country, roughly 10% to 20% of students intending to go to college change their minds, failing to matriculate in the fall. This can occur at many points following the deposit. It can begin with financial aid confusion. It can be compounded by housing steps, complicated by family doubts and burdened by deadlines.
The same challenge continues throughout the student life cycle. If students step onto campus and feel unsupported or disconnected from opportunity, retention becomes as much a brand health indicator as a student success indicator. When institutions promise support, those promises are tested continuously during the student experience, across advising, aid, well-being support or career guidance. Institutions need to ensure that there isn’t a gap between the experience promised and the experience that is delivered.
What leading institutions are doing differently
The institutions that ensure trust is present throughout the student life cycle journey share a similarity: They have one coherent value story.
They connect brand, admissions, aid, advising, career outcomes, student success and alum messaging around a clear value proposition. That alignment produces consistent content that educates rather than promotes. Their messaging connects outcomes data to student stories and addresses the questions students and families are actually asking.
The result is trust. When brand and content teams work with admissions and financial aid, they create communications that are reassuring and grounded in proof. When teams ensure that the value language is consistent, students receive the same story regardless of where they interact with the institution, giving students consistent reasons to trust it.
Some examples:
UCF College of Business: Turning selectivity into proof of value
- For UCF graduate business programs, Swish repositioned admissions requirements, on-campus delivery and employer-connected program value as trust signals rather than barriers. Program-specific landing pages, first-party audiences, retargeting and customer relationship management (CRM)-connected reporting helped generate 10,600+ leads over five years, helped improve landing page conversion rate from 4.0% to 8.5%, and supported 90% of programs meeting or exceeding enrollment targets.
Kean University: Life cycle communications and yield accountability
- For Kean, Swish built a full-funnel enrollment engine around speed to lead, first-party data activation, student-journey landing pages and yield campaigns designed to reduce post-admit melt. The work expanded from online programs to the full advertising budget while maintaining cost per lead (CPL) under $52 over seven years and supporting record fall 2024 enrollment of 19,000+ students across U.S. and China campuses.
University of Colorado/CU Denver: Measuring beyond platform leads
- Across the University of Colorado (CU) system and CU Denver program campaigns, Swish connected media, landing page, CRM and dashboard reporting so teams could evaluate performance by lead volume, CPL, application starts and CRM-confirmed outcomes. CU saw 21K+ leads in 2025, a 37% year-over-year click-to-lead improvement and a 20% year-over-year CPL reduction across all campuses.
Chapman University Dodge College: Proof-led strategy before media allocation
- Recent Swish strategy work for Chapman Dodge frames enrollment media around fit, intent and proof; movement through the enrollment journey; and budget decisions based on lead-to-application quality rather than raw lead volume. The strongest institutions do more than communicate value; they make value measurable at each decision point.
These results demonstrate the power of understanding and optimizing the enrollment journey. The next opportunity is extending that intent into the content and experience that reinforce value after acquisition.
From real-world outcomes to human value story
To make value clear at each decision point, institutions must champion real-world outcomes, or outcomes that show more than employment and earnings data.
Numbers help establish a level of credibility, but they rarely resolve the doubts students are facing. Human stories, however, move people. Institutions that connect data-based outcomes to human stories exemplify how students build skills, access support, form networks and create new possibilities for themselves.
It’s about recognizing the broader forms of value students and families care about, such as:
When institutions recognize these forms of value and connect employment and earnings data with authentic human stories in their content and across their messaging, they transform abstract claims into tangible proof.
We saw this firsthand in our work with High Point University. Pace helped HPU turn the story of the value its graduates bring to employers into an audience-focused content experience supported by targeted distribution. The campaign drove more than 563,000 visits to HPU content, while ongoing optimization of the content experience generated nearly 50,000 engaged sessions and increased video interaction by 140%.
This is the space where Pace lives—turning an institution’s value proposition into content focused on the lived experiences, motivations and questions shaping audience behavior, and ensuring those stories reach the right people at the right moments.
Actionable recommendations
So, after recognizing the broader forms of value, what does it look like to build those into the student experience itself? It begins with a few practical shifts:
- Using content to build trust as melt prevention (such as plain-language aid explanations, parent-facing FAQs, housing guidance and progress checklists)
- Building a life cycle messaging map that identifies where confidence rises or falls
- Treating admitted-student communications as onboarding instead of promotion
- Providing near-term ROI proof, including skills, support, networks and early career preparation
- Maintaining consistent value language across public-facing recruitment materials and in practical communications (such as financial aid, housing, orientation communications)
Making value visible throughout the student life cycle requires more than strong messaging in isolated moments. It requires an integrated brand, content and communications strategy that connects departments, channels and experiences around a shared value narrative. That is where Pace and Swish help institutions turn life cycle complexity into a coordinated value story students can see, believe and act on.
The opportunity for institutions that adapt
Higher education has an ROI problem because value is no longer assumed. Marketing leaders must consider that this is more than a communications issue. The confidence students and their families have affects yield, melt, retention, reputation, enrollment stability and the return on every acquisition dollar already spent.
Institutions establish proof of value when they operate beyond the recruitment window; when they build trust at critical decision points, from financial aid to housing and well-being; and when they merge outcome data with authentic human stories.
The value of higher education must be made visible wherever doubt can enter the student journey because trust is what ultimately differentiates institutions. The institutions that get it right consistently prove their value, from that first conversation around the kitchen table to graduation and beyond.
Acknowledgements
A special thanks to Swish colleague Matt McGee for sharing insights and perspectives throughout the development of this report, and to Pace colleagues Lori Beal, Jamie Lawrence, Tazmen Hansen and Liz Wynne for their editorial and design support.
