As more and more higher education institutions explore how artificial intelligence can responsibly support student success, a more useful question is emerging:
What makes an AI-powered advising experience genuinely useful to students and staff?
Launching a new tool is not enough today. Institutions also need to understand whether students find these experiences easy to navigate, relevant to campus resources, aligned with institutional mission and values, and integrated with human support at each step.
To better understand perceptions, usability, and key barriers to student success, the team of AI experts and higher education professionals at Advisor AI conducted two years of research across thousands of student and advisor interactions. Through usability studies, guided testing sessions, implementation feedback, surveys, and real-world deployments, the team examined how learners and staff engage with AI-powered guidance experiences.
The findings revealed a consistent trend: students value experiences that are simple, personalized, and provide ongoing value, while advisors seek systems that are integrated, grounded in trusted advising practices, and easy to adopt.
Taken together, the findings suggest that students do not evaluate AI-powered guidance by novelty alone. They value experiences that reduce friction, clarify decisions, and connect them to relevant opportunities and people at each step.
Over a two-year period, Advisor AI conducted ongoing research to better understand how students and advisors engage with AI-powered guidance experiences.
Research activities included:
The findings presented in this report draw upon insights from more than 1,000 students and advising professionals across a diverse range of educational environments, including colleges, universities, schools, and international programs.
In addition, members of the Advisor AI founding team conducted hundreds of one-on-one guidance conversations with students between 2023 and 2025. While these conversations were not formal research studies, they provided valuable qualitative insight into the challenges students face, the questions they ask, the decisions they struggle to navigate, and the resources they consistently seek throughout their academic and career journeys.
Across these research efforts, several core questions emerged:
Rather than evaluating a single institution or implementation, this research reflects broader patterns observed across diverse student populations, advising teams, and educational settings. The findings represent recurring themes that emerged through ongoing engagement with students, advisors, and institutional partners navigating the future of student success.
Across the research, usability emerged as one of the strongest predictors of student engagement.
Students were asked to evaluate the ease of use, accessibility, and navigation of the experience.
Within a 4 week pilot study, 98% of registered students completed the digital assessment, and 93% rated the platform as simple to use, with many students citing the following feedback.
“I think all of the features that AdvisorAi has are great.”
“This system is very short and simple and helps in a quick and easy way.“
“This site can help several students around campus and other universities”
“I really like the platform, I think it is a really good tool for students to have at their disposal”
For today's digital native students, usability is no longer a nice to have, but a minimum standard.
When students can easily understand how a system works and what to do next, they are more likely to engage and return for support. The most effective experiences reduce complexity, provide clarity, and help students move confidently from exploration to action.
Students responded positively to personalized insights connecting their academic choices with potential career outcomes. Data points include:
Students shared that these connections helped them more easily understand their options and feel more confident about their direction to persist and graduate with a meaningful credential.
"The information I learned about salary and career growth helped me realize that I am on the right trajectory for my career."
"Advisor AI helped me explore my options with more confidence. The experience was simple, clear, and easy to use."
Students are not simply looking for more information. They want clarity and confidence in what that information means for them.
Personalized insights are most valuable when they help students connect information to their own goals and identify a meaningful next step. For institutions, this means effective personalization should go beyond recommending options, it should help students understand why an option may be relevant to them and what they can do next.
Students consistently asked for guidance that extends beyond choosing a major or exploring a career. They wanted help turning insights into practical next steps, including internships, courses, certifications, mentorship, and career experiences.
Participants shared:
“If the tool could show recent internships that have gone live so students could find an internship suitable to their personalized insights I feel that it could help a lot of people.”
“Include what you can do now as a student when it comes to internships, certificates, and personal initiatives to take in your free time.”
“More 1 on 1 interactions.”
“Advice for career goals and potential mentors.”
Students increasingly view advising as an ongoing developmental process, not a single interaction.
They want guidance that helps them move from exploration to action. For institutions, this means advising experiences should connect students to relevant opportunities, people, resources, and next steps rather than ending with an assessment or recommendation.
Post exploration, 80% of students rated engagement with a human advisor or mentor as valuable.
Students consistently highlighted the importance of human connection and expert guidance alongside AI-powered support. Through digital and classroom experiences, students valued conversations that provided context, encouragement, and actionable advice.
Students see AI as a complement to human guidance, not a replacement for it.
For institutions, the opportunity is to design experiences where technology expands access and prepares students for meaningful conversations, while advisors, mentors, and experts remain central to relationship-building, context, and complex decision-making.
Students consistently highlighted the importance of human connection and expert guidance alongside AI-powered support. Through advisor and expert connection experiences, students valued conversations that provided context, encouragement, and actionable advice.
Students shared:
"My meeting was very helpful and the advisor was kind and had useful information."
“I spoke with Kelly for the meeting with a human advisor, and she was very helpful! I found her insight and suggestions to be very relevant to me, and helpful.”
AI does not replace human guidance. Students view technology as a complement to advisors, mentors, and experts, helping expand access to personalized support. For institutions, the opportunity is not to choose between AI and human advising. It is to design experiences in which technology expands access and preparation while advisors remain central to meaning-making, relationship-building, and complex decision support.
Students expressed a need for stronger connections between:
Students shared:
"It would be very helpful to have what classes you should take laid out instead of having to ask around."
Another requested:
"The ability to recommend specific classes."
Connecting assessment results with relevant career data increased students’ awareness of university-specific programs by 31%. This suggests that students gain greater visibility into available programs when academic options are presented alongside clear career context and outcomes.
Students often experience academic planning and career planning as separate processes. This creates a structural challenge for institutions, where academic advising and career services are often organized through separate offices, systems, and workflows. Students, however, experience these decisions as one continuous journey. More connected guidance can help them understand how choices made in one part of the institution affect opportunities in another.
The research highlights several key trends shaping the next generation of student success:
Students are more likely to engage when guidance is easy to navigate and clearly connected to a decision they are trying to make. Institutions should evaluate student success technology not only by the range of information it provides, but by how easily students can understand and act on that information.
Students do not experience course selection, major exploration, internship preparation, and career planning as isolated activities. They see them as connected decisions about their future. Institutions have an opportunity to reduce fragmentation by creating clearer links between academic pathways, career outcomes, and experiential opportunities.
The findings do not suggest that students want technology to replace advisors, mentors, or experts. They suggest that students value technology when it helps them prepare, explore, and identify next steps, while preserving access to people who can provide context, encouragement, and judgment.
These findings point to a practical standard for evaluating AI-powered student support.
The question is not whether a platform can generate information. The question is whether it helps students understand their options, identify a meaningful next step, and connect with the human support they need.
For leaders, that means evaluating AI as part of a broader student success system. Useful technology should reduce friction, strengthen guidance, and make academic and career pathways easier to navigate without separating students from the relationships that shape their progress.