The National Institute for Student Success (NISS) has built a recognized system of proactive, data-driven institutional initiatives that improve student outcomes. While these interventions have been studied for their impact on college persistence and graduation, less is known about how they relate to students’ long-term workforce outcomes. A new report funded by the Strada Education Foundation and the result of a collaboration between NISS researchers and the Burning Glass Institute links more than 40,000 student records from Georgia State University with the Burning Glass Institute’s career data. Covering a period of fourteen years, the study examines the association between bachelor’s graduates’ employment, earnings, and career progression and four major interventions: Proactive-Analytics Based Advising, Panther Retention Grants (PRG), Meta-Major Based Freshman Learning Communities (FLC), and the Summer Success Academy (SSA).

Students who received more than a year of proactive advising showed markedly stronger patterns of workforce alignment. One year after graduation, these students were nearly twice as likely to be working in roles connected to their major compared to peers with limited advising exposure. Alignment strengthened even further when supports were layered. Students who combined advising with completion grants and meta‑major based Freshman Learning Communities demonstrated the most consistent gains, with Pell recipients showing especially notable improvements in securing degree‑relevant roles. 

The report also highlights encouraging earnings patterns, particularly for Pell students. Five years after enrollment, those who received both advising and completion grants earned eight to nine thousand dollars more in social science and computer science fields than similar students who did not receive such support. Pell students who received advising alone saw meaningful wage advantages, including roughly five thousand dollars more in psychology and seven thousand dollars more in health‑related fields, compared to matched peers. 

Career advancement followed a similar trajectory. Advising demonstrated a clear dose effect in which each additional year of engagement was associated with a higher likelihood of entering leadership or management roles in the workplace. Eight years after enrollment, those who received three to four years of advising were fourteen percentage points more likely to reach a management role than students with no proactive analytics‑based advising. The combination of advising and completion grants was associated with even quicker advancement, with three percent of these students reaching executive positions within five years. 

Finally, the study situates these outcomes within the broader labor market. Nationally, the Burning Glass Institute reports that fifty‑two percent of bachelor’s degree graduates are underemployed one year after completing their degrees. Among students who participated in NISS interventions, that figure was thirty‑eight percent, a substantially lower rate that has remained consistent across advising‑era cohorts. 

Taken together, these patterns illustrate meaningful associations between proactive, data‑driven student support and career outcomes. This is especially relevant given that previous research in this area has highlighted the importance of experiences such as study abroad, multiple internships, multi-semester-long research projects, and deep mentorships. These programs, while impactful, are most available to well-resourced students attending elite institutions. The NISS interventions are currently being scaled across 170 NISS partner institutions, many of them community colleges, HBCUs, HSIs, and regional publics. 

The findings from this Burning Glass study offer a refreshing and hopeful perspective. They reveal just how transformative data-informed and proactive undergraduate interventions can be when deployed with intention. Their scalability across almost any institution makes their promise even more profound. Ultimately, these interventions demonstrate that broad improvements in career outcomes—and the narrowing of longstanding earnings gaps for Pell students—are not only possible, but achievable at scale.