This is the final installment of our series on digital transformation in higher education.

We've explored the "version lock-in" that traps universities in obsolete code. The hidden costs that turn "free" platforms into surprisingly expensive ones. The operational paralysis that emerges when marketing depends on IT for every change. And the criteria that should guide the decision to change.

Now I want to talk about the future. Not the distant and speculative future. The future that's already here, transforming how students search for information, make decisions, and relate to universities.

Because while many institutions are still debating whether to update their WordPress to the latest version, the playing field is changing beneath their feet.

The student who never visits your website

In 2023, only 4% of high school seniors used AI tools like ChatGPT to explore university options.

In 2024, that figure rose to 10%.

In 2025, according to the Carnegie Higher Ed study with more than 3,400 students and parents, 23% of high school graduates already use AI in their university search process. Among students who start earlier (the "rising students"), the figure reaches 25%.

That's 475% growth in two years.

66% of college students use ChatGPT regularly, according to the Digital Education Council. Not as a novelty, but as an everyday tool. As their "24/7 tutor," as they describe it themselves.

What does this mean for your university?

It means there's a growing segment of potential students who will form their first impression of your institution without ever stepping foot on your website. They'll ask ChatGPT "what are the best universities to study engineering in Spain?" or "what do students think of the MBA at [your university]?" and receive a synthesized answer from multiple sources.

If your content isn't structured for AI to understand and cite it, you simply won't exist in that conversation.

The end of the click

There's a metric that's redefining digital marketing: zero-click searches.

According to Similarweb data from July 2025, 69% of all Google searches now end without the user clicking on any result. It was 56% just a year ago.

Think about it: 7 out of 10 people who search for something on Google get their answer directly on the results page, without visiting any website.

The engine of this change is Google's AI Overviews (formerly called Search Generative Experience). These AI-generated responses now appear in 13-20% of all searches, and the figure is rising rapidly. By May 2025, Google expected them to appear in more than 80% of informational queries.

The impact on traffic is brutal. Semrush studies show that when an AI Overview appears, CTR (click-through rate) can drop by up to 47%. Some publishers have reported 89% drops in clicks for certain terms.

Chegg, the educational platform, reported a 49% drop in non-subscriber traffic in January 2025 compared to the previous year. Its CEO directly attributed the drop to Google AI Overviews now answering the questions that used to drive traffic to their site.

For universities, this has enormous implications:

The visibility paradox

Here's the irony: global searches keep growing. Google processes between 9 and 13 billion searches daily in 2025, more than ever.

But more searches doesn't mean more visits to your website. It means more opportunities for Google (and ChatGPT, and Perplexity, and the others) to respond directly, without sending you the traffic.

Gartner predicted organic traffic would drop 25% by 2026. The 2025 data suggests that prediction was conservative.

What does this mean for university marketing?

The traditional funnel is broken.

The classic model—attract traffic with informational content, capture leads, nurture with emails, convert to enrollments—assumes traffic arrives. When 69% of searches don't generate clicks, that model needs to be fundamentally rethought.

Universities that keep optimizing only to "rank on Google" are optimizing for a game that's ceasing to exist.

What leading institutions are doing differently

The most advanced universities aren't ignoring these changes. They're adapting. These are the patterns we observe:

1. Optimization for AI, not just traditional SEO

Content that appears cited in AI Overviews has specific characteristics: it's well-structured, uses verifiable data, answers concrete questions clearly and concisely.

Leading universities are reformulating their content to be "citable" by AI. That means:

2. Real multichannel presence

If students search on ChatGPT, TikTok, Reddit, and YouTube before reaching Google, your presence has to be on all those channels. Not as an extension of your website, but as native content for each platform.

The EAB report on student communication preferences shows that, although AI chatbots generate little trust compared to other sources, students use them more and more. 26% have already used an AI chatbot in their university search process.

The strategy can't be "bring them to the website." It has to be "find them where they are and give them value there."

3. Content that justifies the click

In a world of instant answers, the only content that generates clicks is content that offers something AI can't give: depth, unique perspective, firsthand experience.

That means less "what is an MBA" and more "what my experience was like in the MBA at [university], month by month." Less generic data and more specific stories. Less content that any AI can synthesize and more content that only your institution can create.

4. Speed of response to market

The EducationDynamics report for 2025 says it clearly: "Agility and responsiveness define the leaders" in higher education marketing.

When a topic is trending, when there's news relevant to your sector, when a positioning opportunity arises, can you publish content in hours? Or do you need weeks of internal process?

Universities with agile platforms can create microsites for events, landing pages for new programs, and rapid-response content when the moment requires it. Those with heavy processes arrive late, when the conversation has already moved.

5. Experiences, not just information

The Deloitte report on higher education trends 2025 notes that today's students are "relentlessly outcomes-focused." They want to know what they're going to achieve, not what they're going to study.

The university website of the future isn't a program catalog. It's a tool that helps students visualize their future, explore possibilities, and make informed decisions.

That requires interactivity, personalization, and dynamic content. Things that are almost impossible to implement on a WordPress with 47 plugins maintained by three different agencies.

The "enrollment cliff" and competitive pressure

All of this is happening in a context of unprecedented pressure.

2025 marks the beginning of the so-called "enrollment cliff" in the United States: the 15% demographic drop in traditional students that experts have been anticipating for years. In Spain and Europe, demographic dynamics are similar.

Fewer potential students means more competition for each one of them. And that competition is now global. A university in Madrid competes not only with other Spanish ones, but with institutions from around the world offering online programs.

In this context, the difference between capturing or losing a student can be in:

Universities with obsolete digital infrastructure are fighting this battle with one hand tied behind their back.

What's coming: preparing for the unknown

If we've learned anything from recent years, it's that predicting the technological future is an exercise in humility.

Three years ago, nobody anticipated that ChatGPT would radically change how students search for information. Five years ago, Google's AI Overviews didn't exist.

What we can affirm with certainty is that change is accelerating.

The question isn't whether there will be more disruptions. The question is whether your digital platform is built to adapt when they arrive.

A website trapped in version lock-in, with hidden costs consuming the innovation budget, and with processes that take weeks to publish any change, isn't prepared to adapt to anything.

An agile platform, with predictable costs, that allows marketing teams to act autonomously, can pivot when necessary.

Futurist Tom Koulopoulos expressed it clearly in his keynote at the Jenzabar Annual Meeting 2024: "If we're not embracing AI now, we're going to fall behind."

It's not a threat. It's an observation about the speed of change.

The three questions you should be asking

Throughout this series, we've explored many data points, cases, and arguments. But in the end, the decision to transform your digital ecosystem comes down to three fundamental questions:

1. Does your current platform allow you to compete in today's market?

Not in the market from five years ago when you chose it. In the current market, where students use AI, where Google shows answers without sending traffic, where execution speed is a competitive advantage.

If the answer is "yes, but with limitations," the real answer is probably "no."

2. Will your current platform allow you to adapt to tomorrow's market?

Nobody knows exactly what university marketing will look like in 2030. But we know it will be different from today. Do you have a platform that can evolve, or one that anchors you to the present?

If every change requires a development project, if every new technology means months of integration, if your improvement roadmap is limited by your CMS's capabilities, the answer is clear.

3. Is the cost of not changing greater than the cost of changing?

This is the question many universities avoid. It's easier to compare the cost of a migration with the available budget than to calculate the cost of continuing to lose competitiveness.

But the cost of not acting is real. It's every lead you don't capture because your landing wasn't ready. It's every student who chooses the competition because their digital experience was better. It's every hour your team dedicates to maintaining obsolete systems instead of innovating.

Southwest Airlines ignored the cost of not modernizing their systems until they lost $220 million in a quarter. Most universities won't have such a dramatic crisis moment. They'll have a gradual erosion of competitiveness that will only be obvious in retrospect.

A personal closing

I've dedicated these five installments to exploring the real challenges universities face in their digital transformation. Not because they're simple problems with obvious solutions, but precisely because they're not.

Changing web platforms is an important decision. It requires investment, effort, internal change management, and a certain level of risk.

But maintaining the status quo is also a decision. And it also has costs, even if they're less visible.

What I hope to have conveyed in this series is that those hidden costs—version lock-in, growing maintenance expenses, operational paralysis, the inability to adapt—are not inevitable. They're consequences of decisions that can be changed.

The future of higher education is digital. The universities that thrive will be those that can connect with students where they are, respond to their needs with agility, and evolve at the pace the market demands.

The technology to do it exists. The question is whether you have the will to adopt it.

In summary: the data that matters

To close this series, a reminder of the key figures we've explored:

About student AI use:

About zero-click searches:

About IT-Marketing dependency:

About platform costs:

About the market:

Thank you for joining us in this series.

If these reflections have been useful, if they've made you rethink something, or if they've simply given you arguments for an internal conversation you needed to have, they will have served their purpose.

Change isn't easy. But staying still isn't either.