Are college students really so disengaged? And what actually works?

Faculty across higher ed are noticing something: students seem harder to reach than they used to be (McMurtrie, 2022; Mintz, 2022). Students feel it too — 6 in 10 undergrads say staying engaged is a real challenge (Wiley, 2023).

But this isn't a story about students who care less. It's a story about students learning in a world that looks very different from the one most of us trained to teach in. The research helps explain what's actually going on — and points toward what works.

What's actually going on

Every generation of students is shaped by the moment they grow up in. Today's undergraduates are no exception, and the headwinds they're navigating are real:

• Digital immersion and constant connectivity have produced a documented kind of digital fatigue (Abola, 2026; Bailenson, 2021).

• Mental health remains a meaningful factor in academic focus. While depression and anxiety have eased since their pandemic peak, only 36% of students report "flourishing" (Healthy Minds Study, 2025).

• COVID measurably affected student engagement, and recovery has been uneven across institutions (NSSE, 2022).

• Students — and their families — increasingly evaluate higher education through an ROI lens, which shapes how they show up in any given course.

• Economic pressure is real. Housing and food insecurity continue to rise on many campuses (Hope Center, 2025; GAO, 2024).

• AI itself is generating anxiety. Students worry about how to use it ethically, what it means for their careers, and whether they'll be wrongly flagged by unreliable detection tools (Inside Higher Ed, 2025; Inside Higher Ed, 2026).

Seen this way, lower engagement isn't a character problem — it's a rational response to a genuinely demanding moment.

That said, there are also instructional patterns worth examining honestly:

• Between 55–75% of university courses are still delivered primarily through lecture. Lectures aren't inherently disengaging (Bressoud, 2018), but passive content delivery makes it harder to sustain attention and confirm that meaningful learning is happening.

• Online courses are often well-structured but designed for passive consumption, with limited active learning built in (Mujallid et al., 2024). When the path of least resistance is to check a box, many students will.

The takeaway isn't that faculty are doing something wrong. It's that the conditions have shifted, and the tools we use to design for engagement can shift with them.

Three things that actually work

Faculty can't fix the financial stress, the digital fatigue, or the long tail of the pandemic. But the design of the learning experience itself is still firmly in our hands — and the research is encouraging.

1. Make learning active. Passive instruction is the default because it's familiar, not because it's effective. Active learning consistently outperforms passive learning for long-term retention (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006), and embedding questions directly into content meaningfully improves outcomes over passive consumption (Torres et al., 2022). In-class, this looks like Socratic dialogue, bellringers, peer discussion, or a quick exit ticket. Online, it means replacing static slide decks with retrieval practice, knowledge checks, and dynamic application activities that invite productive struggle.

2. Make learning relevant and valuable. If students are preoccupied with the economic value of their degree — "I pay tuition, I earn grades, I get a job" — then it's on us to keep articulating the deeper value too: the critical thinking, creativity, and resilience that come from real understanding. Self-determination research has long shown that students engage more deeply when they can see why what they're learning matters (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Sometimes that means tying a topic to a career application. Sometimes it means naming the long-term payoff out loud — the durable skills that outlast any one job title.

3. Connect with students. Belonging is a motivational multiplier. Graduates who felt a professor cared about them as a person were nearly twice as likely to be engaged at work — yet only 27% of graduates report having had that experience (Strada-Gallup, 2018). Even small, low-effort cues of social connection measurably increase persistence and motivation (Walton et al., 2012). For higher ed faculty managing large sections, this is often the hardest piece to scale — and the one where AI has the most to offer.

Scaling engaged learning with AI

Most faculty already know what good active learning looks like. The real constraint is time — to redesign a course, to give every student timely feedback, to notice the quiet student in row eight before week ten. SchoolAI is built to lower that barrier, not to replace what faculty do, but to extend their reach:

• Ask SchoolAI to rework a lecture outline so it sustains attention in 10-minute chunks.

• Transform shared slides or notes into an active learning exercise — fill-in-the-blanks, a knowledge check, or a short formative assessment.

• Open every class with a SchoolAI-powered bellringer that surfaces gaps in the required reading, or close with a 5-minute AI-guided reflection as an exit ticket.

• Bring active learning into online content with SchoolAI Spaces — for roleplays, topic deep dives, concept mapping, or guided Q&A that adapts to each student.

Even better, Spaces give faculty real-time insight into how every student is engaging, which surfaces who needs a check-in and who's ready for a stretch — at a scale that simply wasn't possible before.

Active, engaged learning is one piece of a much bigger student engagement picture. But it's a meaningful piece, and one that's genuinely within reach of any faculty member today.

See what it looks like when SchoolAI helps faculty engage every student — in-class and online.

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References & Further Reading

Bailenson, J. N. (2021). Nonverbal overload: A theoretical argument for the causes of Zoom fatigue. Technology, Mind, and Behavior, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.1037/tmb0000030

Bressoud, D. (2018). A False Dichotomy: Lecture vs. Active Learning – Mathematical Association of America. Retrieved March 5, 2026, from Maa.org website: https://maa.org/math-values/2018-7-9-departmental-turnaround-the-case-of-san-diego-state-university-3ln58-s47wz-3grrx-gscyl/

Heinze, J., Eisenberg, D., Lipson, S. K., & Zhou, S. (2025). 2024–2025 Healthy Minds Study national data report. Healthy Minds Network. https://healthymindsnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/2024-2025_HMS-National-Data-Report_Student.pdf

Hope Center for Student Basic Needs. (2025). 2023–2024 student basic needs survey report. Temple University. https://hope.temple.edu/research/hope-center-basic-needs-survey/2023-2024-student-basic-needs-survey-report

Mintz, S. (2022, April 14). An epidemic of student disengagement. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-gamma/epidemic-student-disengagement

McMurtrie, B. (2022, April 5). A "stunning" level of student disconnection. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-stunning-level-of-student-disconnection

Mujallid, A. (2024). Digital active learning strategies in blended environments to develop students' social and emotional learning skills and engagement in higher education. European Journal of Education, 59(4). https://doi.org/10.1111/ejed.12748

National Survey of Student Engagement. (2022). Rebounding engagement: Has higher education returned to "normal"? Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research. https://nsse.indiana.edu/research/annual-results/2022/story1.html

Roediger, H. L., III, & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68

Strada Education Network & Gallup. (2018). 2018 Strada-Gallup alumni survey: Mentoring college students to success. https://news.gallup.com/reports/244058/2018-strada-gallup-alumni-survey.aspx

Torres, D., Pulukuri, S., & Abrams, B. (2022). Embedded questions and targeted feedback transform passive educational videos into effective active learning tools. Journal of Chemical Education, 99(7), 2738–2742. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.2c00342

Walton, G. M., Cohen, G. L., Cwir, D., & Spencer, S. J. (2012). Mere belonging: The power of social connections. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102(3), 513–532. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025731

Wiley. (2023, February 13). Student engagement a growing problem for colleges post-COVID, according to new Wiley research [Press release]. https://newsroom.wiley.com/press-releases/press-release-details/2023/Student-Engagement-a-Growing-Problem-for-Colleges-Post-COVID-According-to-New-Wiley-Research/default.aspx

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