Social still matters. But in an AI-saturated, algorithm-driven discovery environment, the institutions students trust most won't be the loudest on the feed. They'll be the clearest off it.
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Higher ed journeys are becoming trust journeys (beyond the social feed)

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Higher ed journeys are becoming trust journeys

Ask a higher ed marketer whether social media still works and most will say yes…with caveats.

Ask them whether students trust what they find there, and the answer gets more complicated: that's the more interesting question.

The issue isn't whether your university or college should keep posting.

It's what happens to the student journey when the sources of information they use become noisier, more synthetic, and harder to verify.

Their social media feed is still full, but the trust is running thinner.

Students haven't left quite social media, but the environment has changed (you’ve felt that too, right?).

There’s misinformation, bots, AI-generated content, sponsored posts, all with roughly equal visual authority…and that's the context your institution's posts are appearing in!

It’s not a neutral feed of real experiences (maybe it never was, but if felt like it in the early days).

And so imagine yourself a prospective student comparing programmes and universities. That environment doesn't really answer questions well.

It generates them.

The journey is now an information-validation journey

Think about what a realistic student path looks like in 2026:

  • They see a campus video on TikTok.
  • They ask ChatGPT about employment outcomes.
  • They search for tuition fees, find the page vague, and click away.
  • They find a Reddit thread from three years ago.
  • A parent weighs in.
  • They go back to Google.
  • Many of them are using AI chatbots to search for information.

That means for a significant portion of your prospective audience, the first detailed answer they receive about your institution may come from an AI system drawing on whatever it can find, and that could be outdated or simply wrong.

This matters because students aren't just looking for inspiration at each stage of the journey.

They're checking whether what they're seeing sounds believable, feels official, and matches other sources.

University and college websites still have a huge role to play: they can still the most influential resource in students' college search.

Students still end up on your site, but increasingly they arrive there to verify, not just to browse.

So your website isn’t just a place where students convert: it’s a place where students check. `

Parents are part of this too, and most institutions underserve them

Students rarely this decision alone.

Parents are active participants in shortlisting and decision-making, particularly for first-generation, international, and younger applicants.

Their trust journey runs almost entirely through owned content:

  • fees, outcomes
  • support services
  • institutional credibility.

Do your tuition pages speak clearly to families as well as students? Is outcome data easy to find?

If social becomes harder for younger audiences to access—as Australia's under-16 ban is already showing—parents and counsellors absorb even more of the early discovery role.

Australia social media ban and higher education

What social should be doing

Social still earns its place for early visibility, campus life, and timely moments.

But most institutions are running a 2019 social strategy in a 2026 information environment, asking it to carry students from first impression to enrollment, which is too broad a job for what it can reliably deliver.

Right-sizing social means being specific: use it to create initial interest and direct people somewhere better.

Then put the resource saved into the channels that do the harder trust work: structured owned content that answers real questions clearly and shows up in AI-driven search.

One thing worth doing this week

Pick your highest-traffic programme page and ask three questions.

  1. Does it clearly answer what the programme leads to, what it costs, and what it takes to get in?
  2. Does it give a parent enough to feel reassured?
  3. And does it give an AI system enough well-structured information to accurately summarise it?

If the answer to any of those is no, that page is working against your enrollment funnel at the exact moment a prospective student has decided you're worth investigating.

The institutions that win won't be the loudest on the feed.

They'll be the clearest, most consistent, and easiest to trust—with owned content that holds up under scrutiny, transparent fees, visible outcome data, and a coherent path from first impression to first application.

That's a more durable advantage than any single platform can offer.

How is your institution thinking about the role of trust in the student journey? We'd love to hear what's changing in your approach — find us on a.