Career services leaders are being asked to expand access, deepen employer partnerships, and demonstrate outcomes—often with limited staff and increasing expectations.
The 2025-2026 NACE Career Services Compensation + Staffing Benchmarks gives you credible peer data to support budget planning, compensation reviews, reclassification requests, and staffing conversations.
Built from responses from 454 institutions, this research includes interactive dashboards and a concise key insights document to help you compare salary ranges, staffing models, role responsibilities, and student-to-staff ratios across institutions like yours.
Fee: $300 (members); $460 (nonmembers)
Free for member institutions that participated in the survey.
Based on responses from 454 institutions across public, private, and community colleges, this research provides a credible national picture—while allowing you to filter to just the institutions that are most like yours.
Review salary data by role, scope of responsibility, region, Carnegie classification, and institution size to establish competitive compensation standards.
Compare your institution's student-to-staff ratios and budget allocations against those of peer institutions to identify areas of alignment or disparity.
Examine how responsibilities are distributed across leadership and advising roles to ensure clarity and appropriate workload distribution.
Job titles can vary widely across institution type. To ensure you're comparing apples to apples, this year’s survey captures both job titles and functional responsibilities—allowing you to benchmark based on scope of work, and not just title.
Your purchase includes:
Members who participate in NACE research surveys receive free access to the full product for every single NACE member at their organization! Plus, nonmembers who participate are eligible for a discounted rate.
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