Once More, with Feeling: Telling Our Story with Evidence

In June 2026, Gallup and the Lumina Foundation reported that only 38% of Americans hold a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in higher education. A decade ago, it was 57%. When probed, those lacking confidence referenced a perceived political agenda on campus, the cost of education, and a belief that colleges are not preparing students for work.

Across the sector this year, we have watched institutions announce closures, mergers, job losses, and deficits running into tens of millions. And it is with this lens that we are being asked to justify our work. Not just by the general public, but by decision-makers at our institutions. We are being asked if what we do matters, if we add value, if our work is a “core activity.” And when I think about how we are navigating those challenges, I am often reminded of Aaron Burr in the musical “Hamilton,” who spends an entire number complaining that the deals get done in a room he is not in, and that the rest of us are simply expected to assume it all worked out. It highlights how often a few people shape major decisions in private rooms rather than public spaces.

It is scary to say, but college unions and campus activities have no divine right to exist. There never has been. So how do we make sure that our perspective and our value to campus makes it into the “Room Where It Happens,” and that it gets there with compelling evidence attached?

It is tempting, in a climate where opinions feel like they supersede expertise, to find more numbers, as though scepticism can eventually be buried in a spreadsheet or a document. It cannot. A person who doubts us is rarely short of data. They are short of a reason to care.

The best assessment work I have seen does not replace feeling with fact. It gives feeling a shape a decision-maker can act on. This is why data-driven storytelling matters as a method of assessment. How do we use evidence, context, and narrative to turn information into insight, helping others to understand not simply what our data says, but what it means and what should happen as a result? When a student tells us that the union is the only place on campus where they feel like themselves, that is not just a quote for a report; that is a finding in itself. Our job is to work out how many would say the same, which students would not and why, and what measurably changes when we act on those findings. 

Colleagues elsewhere show how data-driven change and storytelling are becoming crucial in our work.

In a post from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University at studentaffairsassessment.org in July 2025 about hiring their first impact and success specialist, they talk about needing a culture-builder and a storyteller, not a data expert—the shift away from traditional assessment toward how that work connects with the feelings that come from storytelling.

NASPA’s Student Employment National Research Study found that only around 35% of institutions analyse data on their hourly student employees for any purpose beyond compliance. However, our college unions are often the largest single employer of students on campus. We hold one of the richest development datasets in the institution and use it to process timesheets.

But two things are worth holding onto. Firstly, collecting evidence and never acting on it is theatre, and our students can tell the difference. And secondly, as predictive analytics reaches our work, a model built on who has succeeded before will quietly flag the students who have always been underserved. Left alone, a flag becomes a prophecy.

But the ask here is not add a doctoral program to an impossible workload. It simply means that if you can see a gap on your campus or a change you know would benefit your students, you need not argue for it alone or from instinct. These are tools to advocate with.

We are good at arguing that we, student affairs professionals, make campus vibrant, a better place to be. It is true, and it is also increasingly not enough for decision-makers. In a culture of rising costs and increasing deficits, vibrancy sounds like a luxury, and luxuries get cut.

The bigger story is the one we too rarely evidence. That a student working at our information desk is learning to de-escalate conflict. That those leading our student organisations are running an organisation with a budget and a governance structure, preparing them for the multinational of the future. We are the place where a student who finds their people in our common spaces in the third week of their first semester is a student still enrolled in year two.

That is not window dressing around the academic experience. That is education, and we are delivering it. So, find one question about your campus that you cannot currently answer, and go and answer it. Then make sure that answer gets into the “Room Where It Happens,” even when you are not in it.