Are your institutions seeing changes in enrollments given the use of AI LLMs like ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews by prospective students?

I’ve been looking at what the publicly traded postsecondary companies said on their most recent earnings calls, and there seems to be a recurring theme around student acquisition and its evolution given the adoption of LLMs by prospective students.

The management teams are saying that prospective students are going through longer and more iterative evaluation processes. Folks are having conversations with their LLMs, who are providing a wealth of information and are offering alternatives. LLMs are now serving as the intermediaries between prospective students and institutions. In the case of the publicly traded companies, this has caused web leads to go down and acquisition costs to go up.

Given that the publicly traded institutions are for-profits, I have no sense if what they are seeing is reflective of their sector or if this is something that all higher ed institutions are seeing.

What are you seeing at your institutions?

What are your thoughts on what's happening regarding prospective student use of LLMs and how it's altering the student journey?

Submitted 2026-08-25T13:45:56Z by TruthHonestyJustice https://ift.tt/xTy2j9J