Most companies think about education in silos. Employees get training. Customers get onboarding. Partners get the occasional webinar. But these programs rarely connect, and that's a missed opportunity.
The most effective organizations are changing that. Education-Led Growth (ELG) is the idea that educating your employees, customers, and partners isn't just a support function—it's one of the most powerful ways to grow a business.
The 2026 Education-Led Growth Report surveyed 190 education professionals to find out how companies are putting that idea into practice. What we found: education programs are expanding, AI is becoming an everyday tool, and teams are getting much better at proving their impact. Here's what the data shows.
1. Education Is Becoming a Revenue Driver
Education used to do one thing: help people do their jobs better or learn a product so they don't churn. That's still important. But in 2026, companies are asking more of their education programs, and they’re seeing results in return.
When employees are better trained, they perform better and ramp faster. When customers understand your product, they expand and renew. When partners are enabled, they sell more effectively. Education across all three audiences adds up—and companies are starting to see it that way.
The numbers back it up. Focus on customer expansion climbed 20 percentage points year over year. And 81.6% of organizations now say revenue growth is a primary goal of their education program, ranking it above performance, retention, and cost reduction.
The mindset shift is significant. Education isn't a cost of doing business. Across every audience, it's one of the most direct levers a company has for driving growth.
2. AI Is No Longer Experimental, It’s Everyday
In 2024, Forrester research predicted that 99.6% of organizations would be using AI by 2026. At the time, that probably seemed ambitious. It wasn't. In this year's survey, 92.6% of education teams say they're already using AI—and the remaining 7.4% are likely not far behind.
The most common uses are practical ones: writing content faster (69.9%), automating learner support like chatbots (65.3%), and planning what to build next (65.3%). Teams aren't using AI to replace what they do; they're using it to do more of it, faster.
Smaller teams tend to focus on using AI to create content and assessments. Larger organizations are going further, using it to analyze data and predict outcomes. But the common thread is the same: AI is helping education teams operate at a scale that wasn't possible before.
3. Teams Are Getting Smarter About Measurement
The direction is clear: education teams are measuring their impact earlier and more consistently than ever before. In this year's survey, 76% of teams start measuring within three months of launching something new. And only 5% report not measuring consistently at all.
Whether or not those numbers reflect a direct year-over-year shift, the picture they paint is encouraging. Most teams aren't just running programs anymore; they're tracking whether those programs are actually working.
4. Education Data Is Connecting to the Rest of the Business
Most education teams run their programs through a learning management system (LMS). That's not changing. But where teams are measuring impact is expanding fast.
CRM tools (55.3%) and customer support platforms (51.6%) are now among the most common ways education teams track their results. That matters because it means education data is starting to live alongside the data the rest of the business uses every day: sales data, customer health scores, support ticket volume.
When education connects to those systems, it becomes much easier to show what it's actually doing for the business. And that's when education stops being a cost center and starts becoming a growth driver.
5. Leadership Level Shapes What Education Can Achieve
Who leads your education program matters more than you might think. Programs led by C-level or VP leaders consistently outperform those led at the manager level, boasting higher completion rates, better use of data, and more investment in tools like AI.
In 2026, 22.2% of education programs report executive-level leadership, up from last year. That's progress. But 31.6% of programs are still led at the manager or senior manager level, which means many teams are doing important work without the organizational support to scale it.
If you're leading an education program and feel like you're fighting for visibility, this data makes your case. And if you're a senior leader reading this, your education team probably has more strategic potential than you're giving them credit for.
What This All Means
The 2026 data points to something simple: education works best when it's treated like a real business function with clear goals, the right tools, and someone senior enough to champion it.
The good news is that more teams than ever are getting there. AI is making it easier to scale. Measurement is becoming the norm. And education is earning its place in conversations about revenue and growth that it wasn't part of before.
Want to see where your program stands? Download the full 2026 Education-Led Growth Report.
