How Real Conversations Can Change LIves

By Jean Rhodes

A new study Lauren Schudde, published in The Review of Higher Education, used nationally representative longitudinal data and propensity score models to examine the effects of early engagement at community colleges. Speaking with faculty about academic matters outside of class increased the probability that students would return for a second year by 5 percentage points, and improved associate degree attainment by nearly 7 percentage points. Those differences correspond to effects of roughly three quarters of a standard deviation for persistence and a full standard deviation for degree completion, which Cohen would describe as medium to very large. Academic contact with faculty also significantly improved the probability of transferring to a four year institution.

They are the kinds of effects we dream of when we design new initiatives and almost never see, and yet the intervention is just having conversations outside of class, something many professors rarely give a second thought. This aligns with a study I’ve written about, in which only students who had texted with another student reported meaningful reductions in loneliness over time. Those who texted with the chatbot were no less lonely than students in the journaling condition. In other words, the cumulative effects of two weeks of human connection were measurable. The cumulative effects of two weeks with a warm, responsive chatbot were not.

We should absolutely use AI to make human support more possible. We can automate routine paperwork, flag patterns that warrant attention, and draft messages that staff and peer mentors then personalize and send. We can free faculty from some of the administrative clutter that keeps them from meeting with students.

One path leads to campuses where students receive regular pings from systems that know their schedules and their transcripts but not their stories. The other leads to campuses where AI hums behind the scenes while faculty, advisors, and peer mentors occupy the front of the house, greeting students by name and walking with them through both crisis and growth. The first path may look efficient in the short term. The second is the only one that aligns with what the research is telling us and what students are quietly asking for.