AI Agents in Student Success

AI has spread across higher education staff in just a couple of years, often through a mix of approved tools and staff-led experimentation. That momentum is understandable. Generative AI and AI agents can help time-strapped teams reduce administrative work and respond more quickly to student needs. But without a strong foundation for implementation and use, AI risks becoming another disconnected layer to manage rather than a tool that improves student support.

This playbook helps student success leaders understand where AI agents can safely and meaningfully support student success work at their institution. Drawn from EAB’s experience deploying AI at hundreds of institutions, it walks leaders through how to evaluate AI agents through the lens of student data, staff capacity, and human-centered support. By the end, student success leaders will be prepared to make key AI decisions and design an implementation plan that fits their institution’s context, goals, teams, and students.

Download it today to learn how to:

• The ways unmanaged AI use quietly erodes student support. Recognize the ways informal AI experimentation is already shaping student support and creating risk.
• Four principles for responsible AI implementation. Use EAB’s guiding principles to set clear expectations for governance, data protection, and human-centered support.
• A higher education AI readiness assessment. Assess your institution’s current maturity stage and identify where to focus next.
• Student success use cases and workflows. See practical examples you can adapt for advising, outreach, student barriers, and staff capacity challenges.
• An action plan for moving from testing to implementation. Choose the right early use case and build a strategy your teams, systems, and students can support.