Right now, higher ed feels like a busy rotary with no signage, complete with flashing warning lights and everyone emphatically honking their horns at the same time. It’s chaotic, loud, a little frightening…and kinda unclear who has the right of way.
The playbook that once guided institutions through decades of prestige and predictability now feels increasingly outdated — and in many cases, sadly reactionary. Colleges and universities confront a convergence of challenges that aren’t just unfamiliar — but foundational. The kinds of issues that keep leadership up at night. The kinds that force uncomfortable conversations about identity, value and the path forward.
It’s no wonder staff feel completely overwhelmed.
But amid the noise, anxiety and uncertainty, I’m happy to hear a lot of quiet optimism. Every inflection point brings the chance to rebuild. And what doesn’t kill us absolutely makes us stronger.
Today, digital campus experiences represent the canary in the coal mine for higher ed’s future. How schools show up online — how they welcome, inform, support and connect others through technology — will now forever be one of the central defining factors in their success…or failure.
As we look ahead, colleges and universities must prioritize the end-user like never before. Today’s higher ed communities expect the same consumer-grade digital experiences they enjoy everywhere else. Technology remains the best mirror for institutional modernity — and if the experience feels outdated or disorganized, so does the school.
Institutions must become more strategic in the tools they deploy and the partnerships they pursue. They can no longer react — they must rethink. And they’re turning to Pathify to do it.
Yes, we build amazing software, but we’re not just in the business of “fixing old portals.” We’re in the business of fixing how higher ed shows up in general. From parents to faculty, alumni to prospective students, every single interaction with your digital campus becomes a reflection of your physical one. The two experiences are now indivisible.
That’s why we’re so bullish on the Campus Experience Platform (CXP) category as a strategy to help higher ed navigate what will objectively be the most difficult decade ahead since the Great Depression. In the coming months, you’ll hear (a lot) more about how Pathify has forged a new category in higher ed tech, but here’s a quick sneak peek if you’ve made it this far.
CXPs don’t add more clutter to the higher ed tech stack — they transform the mess. Anchored by highly personalized and integrated front-end dashboards, they unify communication, events, tasks, groups, systems, support — literally anything and everything — into a single experience layer. All the essentials front and center, beautifully designed for any device, fully accessible and consumer-grade intuitive by default.
Better tech delivers better outcomes, and it starts with taking control of the experience in a way you can shape. Schools embracing a CXP strategy in the coming years make a statement about their identity — and most importantly, where it’s headed. And given the perfect storm of headwinds battering higher ed, is there really anything more important for recruitment, retention and efficiency?
Pathify now supports millions of users at over 250 institutions of all shapes, sizes, affiliations and complexities. I’d be happy to put you in touch with any and all of them (no joke — don’t be shy).
Let’s put a few numbers behind what a CXP strategy actually means:
- One customer, Illinois Tech, reduced IT budget by 8%
- Another, Concord University, cut chatbot costs by 74% after replacing their third-party tool with Pathify’s GenAI Chatbot
- Many others (including Augusta University, the George Washington University, College of Eastern Idaho, Los Angeles Pacific University, to name a few) consolidated 4+ systems into a single, cohesive hub — eliminating vendor sprawl and reducing security risks
These measurable results are not one-off wins. They’re quite the norm for institutions that leverage a CXP. Our customers use Pathify to launch alumni pathways, manage first-year student journeys, support users with a built-in chatbot, foster community for first-gen students and bring faculty together across campuses. They’re embracing Pathify as a strategic differentiator. And they’re openly sharing their journeys, their wins — even their growing pains.
We remain incredibly proud of our product. It’s gorgeous, it’s smart, it’s fast. But we’re even more proud of the community we’re building with institutions, students, their families and other higher ed tech companies who want to partner to put those things first.
We’ve got bold plans for what comes next, including tighter (and many, many more) integrations, richer analytics, smarter AI, deeper personalization…and a whole lot of thought leadership related to the unique combination of challenges higher ed currently faces and how a CXP strategy will help institutions perform and compete.
And as always, we’ll continue building all of this together with our customer community.
If this sounds like a movement — well, it sort of is. And like any true movement, it’s kinetic, a little weird and definitely exhilarating. We know one thing for sure — we refuse to keep circling the higher ed rotary. We’re smashing our way toward a new and exciting tech vertical for colleges and universities — and we’re doing it together.
The next six months will be the most exciting in this movement’s history — and the journey forward starts now.
