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4 in 10 Students Flag Digital Wagering Risks colleen.flaherty Fri, 10/30/2026 - 03:00 AM But most student success administrators say their institution isn’t tracking the issue or they aren’t sure how it’s responding. Byline(s) Colleen Flaherty
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Nearly half of male undergraduates and a third of women at least somewhat agree digital wagering is a problem to which their institution is underresponding.
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Javier Zayaz/iStock/Getty Images
Digital wagering—from online sportsbooks like FanDuel and DraftKings to prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, where users trade on much more than sports—has exploded in recent years. So has the marketing on social and other media, including sports broadcasts. But data on student digital wagering and how institutions are responding to its rise has been scant. Now, findings from two parallel surveys by Inside Higher Ed, one of undergraduates and one of student success administrators, offer insight.
The upshot? Most institutions aren’t tracking the issue on their campus, but 15 percent of student survey respondents say they’ve participated in online sports betting, general prediction-market trading or other digital wagering since enrolling at their college. For men, it’s 25 percent. They’re not just 18- to 24-year-olds: Twelve percent of undergraduates 25 and older have wagered online. And while 11 percent of student success administrators surveyed say their institution considers digital wagering via sportsbooks and prediction markets to be an escalating student mental health or financial safety crisis, much larger shares of students say the issue merits more attention than it’s currently getting. Nearly half of male undergraduates (45 percent) and a third of women at least somewhat agree digital wagering is a problem to which their institution is underresponding. By institution type, four in 10 four-year students agree, as do three in 10 community college students.
About three in 10 men (31 percent) and a quarter of women in the student sample also indicate they know students who have experienced financial distress or academic fallout from online wagering losses. The survey did not specifically ask students if they consider their own use to be problematic. But those who’ve wagered online are somewhat more likely than those who haven’t to agree their institution should take the issue more seriously (44 percent versus 37 percent, respectively).
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Students who’ve wagered online are also more likely to know students who’ve struggled due to losses (38 percent versus 26 percent of nonwagering peers). The share of students who say they’ve gone without at least one basic need in the last year is also elevated for students who’ve wagered online relative to those who haven’t (66 percent versus 60 percent). Still, the overall share of students reporting trouble affording at least one basic need, from medication to transportation, is high either way: roughly six in 10, which is consistent with other research.
Prior research on digital wagering has found that 27 percent of U.S. adults have an account with at least one online sportsbook, and 15 percent have placed a bet on a sports event via an online prediction market.
The new student findings come from Inside Higher Ed’s main annual Student Voice survey with Generation Lab, fielded earlier this month, with 5,034 respondents from 310 mostly public two- and four-year institutions. Reporting on the full set of results—on topics from academic success to career readiness to artificial intelligence—is forthcoming. The institutional data is from the Inside Higher Ed/Hanover Research 2026 Survey of College and University Student Success Administrators, out next month. Its 271 respondents are mostly executive-level student success administrators from two- and four-year institutions.
Among student success leaders, 56 percent say that their division does not currently view or track digital wagering as a high-priority problem. Some 24 percent aren’t sure about their institution’s approach to digital wagering. Beyond the 11 percent who do view the issue as an escalating crisis, 5 percent report a rise in related student engagement with the health or counseling center, and 3 percent note a clear increase in students experiencing financial distress or academic fallout due to losses. Similarly few (3 percent) report updates to their campus’s financial literacy or orientation programming.
AdvertisementThis is somewhat consistent across institution types. In write-in comments, one administrator noted that their institution updated student resources but hadn’t seen much interest. Another wrote, “We are having cross-departmental conversations about gambling and sports betting in an effort to understand our next steps.” Despite the significant odds against bettors, a third wrote, “Students have been able to pay $10,000 of their bill from bets they have won. I believe it is a small but growing problem.”
Four percent of student success leaders also indicate that student athletes or athletic programs have faced disruptions or compliance issues due to the prevalence of sports betting, in particular. In one widely cited survey finding from 2023, the National Collegiate Athletic Association found that 67 percent of college students living on campus had engaged in sports betting, though that survey was not exclusive to online wagering (more than a third of college bettors had used a student bookmaker, for example).
Numbers to Know: Digital Wagering
15%: Students who say they’ve participated in online sports betting, event-prediction markets or other digital wagering since enrolling (9 percent of women versus 25 percent of men)
38%: Students who somewhat or strongly agree it’s a problem that merits more attention than it’s currently getting at their institution (33 percent of women versus 45 percent of men)
56%, 24%: Student success administrators who say their institution isn’t tracking this issue or they don’t know how it’s responding, respectively
11%: Student success administrators whose institution considers this to be an escalating student mental health or financial safety crisis
3%: Student success administrators who say campus financial literacy or orientation programming has been updated to teach students about risks
Sources: 2026–27 Inside Higher Ed/Generation Lab Student Voice survey and Inside Higher Ed/Hanover Research 2026 Survey of College and University Student Success Administrators (both forthcoming)
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College sports expert Karen Weaver, adjunct assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, said that wagering ads, sponsorships and other signals are now so common across sports broadcasts that she struggles to watch, even as a longtime athletics fan. And students drawn in by gamified wagering apps at their fingertips can get “caught in this vortex that you don’t even know you’re in.”
Data helps define the scope of the problem, Weaver said, noting the gap between students’ experiences and views in the Student Voice survey and administrators’ perceptions in their own poll. Yet institutions looking to meaningfully educate and otherwise protect students from digital wagering are “up against a behemoth,” she said, describing a complicated landscape of at-times contradictory regulations and incentives. The NCAA opposed the 2018 legalization of sports betting on a state-by-state basis and continues to flag risks to student athletes and sports integrity, for example.
Meanwhile, some states have designed tax structures around sports betting revenue to benefit public institutions and their sports programs. One of those states, North Carolina, recently added a 6 percent tax on net trading fee revenue by prediction-market operators—though this has been controversial, in part because some believe it could encourage the sports betting platforms that are taxed at a higher rate to rebrand as event markets. This could cut gambling revenue to colleges that have become dependent on it, including to support new player revenue-sharing agreements in some cases.
It “feels like it’s a wild, wild West,” Weaver said.
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Polymarket, as a prediction market—not a sports gambling outfit, per se—is regulated at the federal level by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. It’s also available to 18-year-olds, unlike sports betting sites that states mostly limit to users 21 and up. The platform directed Inside Higher Ed’s questions to a September announcement about a suite of “enhanced user protection and responsible trading tools, including voluntary self-exclusion, deposit limits and access to mental health resources for users experiencing compulsive trading behaviors.”
The announcement also says Polymarket is growing its safety team and publishing new community guidelines and content moderation standards. Earlier this month, Polymarket reportedly pulled from its international market a contract for wagering on possible felony charges against the students accused in the Jane Doe sexual assault case at Cornell University, but not before it had amassed $450,000 in trading volume. Competitor Kalshi, meanwhile, is currently seeking to list wagering contracts about admission rates at 22 highly selective colleges and universities.
Jhenai W. Chandler, vice president for research and policy at NASPA–Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, said she wouldn’t have been surprised by even larger self-reported online wagering numbers, since today’s students “grew up with wagering-style features built into the games and apps they use every day, from in-game purchases to reward mechanics that mimic betting. Sports betting is now at their fingertips and advertised on nearly every digital platform they use.”
As a result, she said, “digital wagering and gambling should be part of the standard prevention conversation on campus. It also belongs in our discussions about mental health, financial aid and financial wellness, because the consequences show up in all those places.”
The first step is doing a “better job of raising awareness,” Chandler added. Staff, faculty and students “need to understand the risks, know how to prevent problems and know where to go for support if they find themselves in trouble.” Because students often turn to each other first, she said, peer education can be part of the strategy.
Prevention is the goal, she continued, but “we have seen young people make life-altering decisions because of gambling and digital wagering, so support and early intervention matter just as much.”