A new national survey confirms something many educators have long suspected: students want far more from college than a credential and a job offer. According to What Students Value in College, a May 2026 report from the LearningWell Coalition, AAC&U, and Morning Consult, students are seeking purpose, identity, belonging, and the chance to apply what they learn to something real. The question is whether institutions are set up to give them those things.
At Digication, we've built our platform around exactly this vision of education. Reading this report felt less like a revelation and more like a confirmation.
Students Want More Than Career Prep
The report surveyed 872 undergraduate students and found that while 36.5% cited career advancement as their primary motivation for attending college, a nearly equal share (38%) cited motivations tied to intellectual growth, personal development, identity formation, and community contribution. Another 15% said their primary driver was supporting their family.
This is a richer, more human picture of student motivation than the dominant "return on investment" narrative tends to allow. First-generation and lower-income students, in particular, prioritize personal growth at higher rates than their more affluent peers. Only 32% of students from households under $50K listed career as their top motivation, compared to 48% of students from households over $100K.
These findings matter because they challenge institutions to ask: are we designing for the students we have, or for an assumed student who simply wants a fast path to employment?
The Experiences That Matter Most Are Often the Hardest to Access
The report identifies a clear pattern: the experiences students find most valuable and that produce the strongest wellbeing outcomes are the least widely available. The researchers call this the "participation gap," and it's striking.
Mentorship with faculty or staff is rated "very" or "extremely" valuable by 76% of students, and students who have a mentor score measurably higher on the PERMA wellbeing framework (7.12 vs. 6.62 for students without one). Internships are the second most valued experience in the entire survey, with 78% of students rating them highly. Service-learning receives similarly strong marks (74% find it valuable), and students who participate report wellbeing scores of 7.15 compared to 6.59 for those who do not.
And yet: only 39% of students report participating in an internship. Fewer than half have engaged in service-learning. And while 53% report having a faculty or staff mentor, that means nearly half of students are going through college without one of the most impactful experiences available to them.
The experiences with the broadest reach, like writing-intensive courses and first-year seminars, show more modest wellbeing gains (+0.24 and +0.20, respectively) and are rated as less valuable by students. Widespread access and meaningful impact are not the same thing.
As the report's authors, Dana Humphrey of the LearningWell Coalition and Ashley Finley of the American Association of Colleges & Universities, put it, this points to "a clear opportunity for institutions: not necessarily to create more programs but to prioritize and scale the experiences that already demonstrate the greatest impact."
Where Digication Fits In
This is precisely the work Digication was built to support.
Reflection as a core practice. The report's findings about student motivation are really findings about meaning-making. Students who engage in mentorship, internships, and service-learning report higher wellbeing not just because they did those things, but because those experiences helped them understand who they are and where they're headed. Digication's ePortfolio features give students a dedicated space to do that meaning-making work: to document their learning, reflect on how they're growing, and develop a coherent sense of their own identity and purpose over time. For students navigating questions of belonging, wellness, and self-understanding, that reflective practice is not a soft add-on. It's central to the educational experience the report says students are asking for.
Making mentorship visible and continuous. Faculty and staff mentors have an outsized impact on student wellbeing, but that impact depends on the quality and continuity of the relationship. Digication creates an ongoing shared space between students and their instructors and advisors, making it easier for faculty to see student work in context, offer meaningful feedback, and build the kind of relationships the report identifies as so critical. Rather than a single advising appointment or a comment on a paper, the platform supports an ongoing conversation about growth.
Documenting and deepening experiential learning. The report is clear that internships and service-learning don't just feel valuable; they produce measurable improvements in student wellbeing and help students connect academic learning to real-world challenges. But those gains depend on students actually processing and reflecting on what they're experiencing. Digication gives students the tools to document their experiential learning, capture evidence of competencies they're developing, and make connections between what happens outside the classroom and what they're learning inside it. For institutions working to expand access to these high-impact practices, Digication helps ensure that students who participate get the most out of them.
Connecting learning to outcomes institutions can see. The participation gap the report describes is partly a visibility problem. Institutions often don't have clear evidence of which experiences are reaching which students, or whether students are making meaning from those experiences in the ways that produce strong outcomes. Digication's assessment tools help institutions connect student work to learning outcomes, track participation in high-impact practices, and gather the evidence needed to make the case for scaling what works.
Supporting reflection with AI. The report's findings about student wellbeing point to the importance of self-awareness, identity development, and the capacity to make sense of one's own learning. Digication's AI-supported reflection features are designed to help students go deeper in that process, prompting more meaningful engagement with their experiences and supporting the kind of integrative thinking that turns an internship or a challenging course into genuine growth.
The Opportunity Ahead
Download the full report and you'll find a clear through line: students come to college with expansive hopes for who they might become, and the experiences most likely to help them get there are not yet reaching everyone. That gap is not inevitable. Institutions have the tools, the people, and now the evidence to close it.
At Digication, we're committed to being part of that work. If you're thinking about how to expand access to high-impact practices, deepen the quality of mentorship and experiential learning on your campus, and give every student the chance to reflect on and take ownership of their own growth, we'd love to hear from you.
This post draws on findings from What Students Value in College (May 2026), authored by Dana Humphrey (LearningWell Coalition) and Ashley Finley (American Association of Colleges & Universities), and published in partnership with Morning Consult.
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