Daniel J. Phelan

Community colleges often measure student success through outcomes: enrollment, persistence, completion, transfer, employment, and mobility. Those measures are important, to be sure. But students do not experience college as a dashboard. They experience it as a personal human journey.

That journey begins before enrollment. It may start with a website search, a question about financial aid, or a phone call made with hope and uncertainty. From that first moment, every interaction teaches the student something about the college’s priorities and culture. Are we accessible? Are we listening? Are we organized around their success? Are we asking them to navigate our complexity?

This is the right frame for technology and digital resources. Technology is not simply an institutional asset; it is part of the student journey. Used well, it can remove barriers, improve communication, strengthen instruction, protect data, increase efficiency, and help employees serve students. Instructional technology can enrich teaching, assessment, and mastery. But technology is not the destination. It is not the guide. It is one resource we use to design a better journey.

That distinction is important because of who community colleges serve. Many students are first-generation; returning after years away; newer to our country; or balancing work, parenting, caregiving, poverty, transportation, uncertainty, anxiety, and a fragile sense of belonging. The Center for Community College Student Engagementⁱ reported that 56 percent of respondents said emotional or mental health challenges affected academic performance, with 66 percent reporting feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge. The Hope Center’sⁱⁱ 2024 Student Basic Needs Survey found that 59 percent of respondents experienced food or housing insecurity. This statistic rose to 73 percent when other basic needs, such as mental health, childcare, transportation, and internet or technology access, were also considered.

Those realities should discipline our choices. A student who is housing insecure, anxious, or unsure how to ask for help may need more than a portal, chatbot, agent, automated message, or self-service pathway. To support these students, we must provide a human who notices, listens, guides, encourages, and sometimes softly challenges. That does not make technology less important, but it does make our choices more important.

At Jackson College, we are intentional concerning our technology and human choices. For example, unlike many organizations, we chose not to force callers immediately into a frustrating digital menu system through which they must listen to prompts and guess which option fits their needs, where, by the time they reach a person, if they reach one at all, they may already feel less valued. For a prospective student, parent, adult learner, or someone returning after stopping out, that first call may be the moment they decide whether the college journey feels possible. So, at Jackson College, a human answers the call. This simple choice reflects a larger principle: The first touchpoint is not merely an operational transaction—it is the beginning of a relationship.

Technology creates tremendous return at some points in the journey: automating reminders, simplifying forms, improving scheduling, supporting online learning, protecting data, and helping faculty identify students who need support. But at other moments, the greatest impact comes from a deeply human connection: the first call, advising, academic difficulty, financial aid confusion, quiet discouragement, feeling lost or alone, and the decision to stay or leave.

We must also consider that students are not one-time transactions. Ideally, they will complete a credential, return for more education, recommend us to family, and see the college as a trusted partner throughout their lives. That means the journey we design must be about more than efficiency. It must be about trust. Do we use technology to support students, or to keep them at a distance? Do we make the path more clear, or shift the responsibility onto them like a grocery store self-checkout lane?

These questions become more urgent as artificial intelligence (AI) becomes woven into higher education. AI may help faculty design learning activities, help students practice, help employees analyze information, and help institutions see patterns earlier. We should explore these possibilities thoughtfully, but we should also be honest about the risks.

At the extreme, if AI develops instructional materials, delivers instruction, and evaluates work, and students respond with AI-generated submissions, what then remains of the educational relationship? Such a system may appear efficient and affordable. But, at some point, education risks becoming credential processing—a financial transaction for a transcript. If that is what we are building, students have every right to ask if this will reduce their tuition. That is not cynicism. It is accountability.

Education is not merely content delivery. It is formation. It develops judgment, confidence, discipline, curiosity, skill, responsibility, and purpose. Those outcomes require teachers, mentors, advisors, coaches, and peers. They require moments when someone says, “You can do this,” and other moments when someone says, “You are capable of more than this.”

Designing the student journey means deciding where technology should lead, where it should support, and where it should step aside. It means using digital resources to make the college easier to navigate while preserving the human relationships that make the institution worth navigating. Technology should help us see students more clearly, reach them more quickly, teach them more effectively, and support them more personally. If it does that, it is an essential resource. If it does not, we should have the courage to choose differently.

Ultimately, the human must remain at the center of the student journey. That is not resistance to innovation. It is the reason innovation matters.

¹ Center for Community College Student Engagement. (2023). Supporting Minds, Supporting Learners: Addressing Student Mental Health to Advance Academic Success.
² The Hope Center for Student Basic Needs. (2024). Student Basic Needs Survey Report.