The 2026 Experiential Learning Benchmark Survey had a record-setting 150 participants, with 90% reporting to be directly involved with experiential learning. Selected data is presented here but click below for the full report.
What is one piece of advice you would like to share with other schools who either have experiential programs, or are considering launching one? Key themes from 90 responses.
Get Institutional Support and Dedicated Staffing and Structure
The most common piece of advice was to not let this be a solo or ad-hoc effort. Respondents repeatedly said to get institutional buy-in and resourcing: “have someone in charge of experiential learning,” “this cannot be a go-it-alone strategy,” build a dedicated center rather than relying on individual faculty, invest in staff for business development, and ensure faculty workload/teaching-load credit reflects the effort (“recognized as a 1.5 min. for teaching loads”). Several warned that without a program owner, the work “falls on individuals” and knowledge is lost when they leave.
Clear Expectations Up Front with Clients and Students
Scope projects carefully and communicate expectations early to avoid mismatches. Under-promise, over-deliver and define project objectives up front to protect program reputation and avoiding scope creep.
Process-based Relationship Building with Industry and Alumni
Develop a process for maintaining contact with industry partners and leverage alumni, not as a one-time ask, but as an ongoing and long-term investment.
Project-based learning is increasingly a requirement, gradually but steadily increasing over the years.
47% of programs surveyed, across all disciplines, have a formal director or office of experiential learning.
This is steady from 2024 where it measured at 52%. Having ongoing and stable support for project-based learning is one of the strongest recurring themes through this survey since it was started, with EL faculty and staff citing lost progress when someone leaves without the proper scaffolding in place. We built EduSourced to provide this scaffolding, with a persistent archive of projects and stakeholders (including clients) through the years as well as operational structure, as opposed to a hodgepodge of spreadsheets, email and dropbox folders.
What is your biggest challenge with experiential projects? Key themes from 104 responses.
Sourcing Enough Good Projects
Roughly one third of respondents named this directly with specific challenges like finding high quality projects, aligning projects to the academic calendar and meeting scaled-up project volume needs. A few responses noted it’s getting harder with companies more hesitant to share data or take on student projects because of confidentiality/IP concerns or AI reducing their perceived need for student help.
Faculty and Staff Capacity, Funding, and Resources
Not having enough people, time, money, or physical space to support growing project volume: “program growth creating significant resource constraints,” being “soft funded” and needing fee-paying clients just to cover staff time, running out of prototyping space, and faculty not being incentivized/rewarded for the extra effort experiential projects require.
Managing Project Fit, Quality, and Team Dynamics
Matching project scope to learning outcomes, uneven student effort, and team-dynamics issues. Inconsistent grading across faculty, and the general difficulty that “every project is different.”
Are there any innovations or new components to your experiential initiatives that you are especially excited about?
AI Implications
The most prominent theme: programs are moving from AI as a taboo/oversight issue to actively requiring or teaching it, creating AI use guidance and even AI as a dedicated learning component. Notably, AI was also mentioned as posing challenges elsewhere in this survey.
Breaking Down Silos
A recurring push toward multidisciplinary and cross-academic year collaboration. Includes new joint-discipline pilot programs, “vertical integration” assignments spanning sophomores through seniors, and student teams that mix majors. Respondents frame this as better mirroring how real project teams work.
Authentic Professional Experience
Several programs are redesigning the student experience to feel less like a class and more like employment. Team credit cards, project budgets, and performance evaluations create a more authentic professional experience.
EduSourced Data: 18.8% of projects in EduSourced, from academic year 2025 through the publishing of the report, include a project mentor. Adding project mentors to experiential learning programs can enhance professional experience for students and help manage scale, per this discussion with several EduSourced customers who deploy mentors to their student teams.
Career readiness is perhaps the core reason experiential project-based learning is so popular. Yet, concern around AI’s impact on the future job market remains. 71% of respondents (90 responses) rated extremely confident when asked their opinion on project-based learning’s importance for career readiness, in light of AI’s prominence in our economy. On the other hand, the average rating for these projects’ helpfulness for students finding their first job is 2.69 out of 3. While high, this was consistently 2.8/3 or higher in previous years.
The 2026 experiential learning benchmark results provide a picture of a field at an inflection point. Experiential learning remains highly valued for career readiness, even as AI reshapes both the projects themselves and the skills students need to develop. Successful experiential learning programs share a common thread with dedicated staffing, clear support structure and intentional relationship-building with industry partners. Process over ad-hoc effort. As these challenges evolve, so too must the tools and processes supporting them. We built EduSourced for exactly this task of comprehensively supporting experiential learning projects and we will continue tracking these trends into the future.
