Edtech Insiders
Edtech Insiders
Ellucian CEO Laura Ipsen on Scaling Higher Education Solutions for a Changing World
Laura K. Ipsen is president and chief executive officer of Ellucian, the leading technology solutions provider for more than 2,900 higher education institutions in more than 50 countries. She has more than 25 years of experience as a technology executive in Silicon Valley, driving transformation in the public and private sectors and spurring adoption of comprehensive solutions in high-growth industries at Oracle Corporation, Microsoft and Cisco Systems. Earlier in her career, Ipsen also held leadership roles at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Acer America, and Hitachi Data Systems.
💡 5 Things You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- How AI is transforming higher education, from predictive analytics to enrollment success.
- Insights from Ellucian’s latest AI survey, highlighting adoption challenges and opportunities.
- The evolving value of a four-year degree in a tech-driven job market.
- How technology can alleviate FAFSA challenges and improve financial aid accessibility.
- The potential of a holistic, data-driven approach to student engagement and success.
✨ Episode Highlights:
[00:03:45] Laura Ipsen on Ellucian’s AI survey and industry readiness for AI adoption.
[00:12:30] Demonstrating the ROI of degrees through skill alignment and data insights.
[00:18:50] The importance of SaaS and data integration for institutional efficiency.
[00:25:40] Addressing FAFSA challenges with technology-driven financial aid solutions.
[00:32:15] Using AI to predict and address student needs and improve retention.
[00:40:10] How the Journey platform connects education to lifelong career success.
[00:48:20] Revolutionizing higher ed productivity through AI-driven administration.
Resources Mentioned:
- Ellucian AI Survey
- Student Voice Report
- EdUp Experience Podcast
- Paul LeBlanc’s Work on AI in Higher Ed
😎 Stay updated with Edtech Insiders!
- Follow our Podcast on:
- Sign up for the Edtech Insiders newsletter.
- Follow Edtech Insiders on LinkedIn!
🎉 Presenting Sponsor:
This season of Edtech Insiders is once again brought to you by Tuck Advisors, the M&A firm for EdTech companies. Run by serial entrepreneurs with over 25 years of experience founding, investing in, and selling companies, Tuck believes you deserve M&A advisors who work as hard as you do.
[00:00:22] Laura Ipsen: The whole goal is how do they govern and embrace in the right way, have, you know, their own rules of the road because students are going to move forward. They can already use tools and capabilities to diagnose, you know, did you write your paper all using generative AI and chat GPT? I think that as much as AI can do that, there are other tools that have accountability.
It will put an opportunity for Administration faculty to engage students in new ways to really focus on those critical thinking, the creative thinking, have more experiential learning, more conversation versus staring at a screen in a lecture. I love those companies that are making it easier for students that learn in new ways.
[00:01:06] Alex Sarlin: Welcome to EdTech Insiders, the top podcast covering the education technology industry from funding rounds to impact AI developments across early childhood, K 12, higher ed, and work. You'll find it all here. Here at
[00:01:20] Ben Kornell: EdTech Insiders, remember to subscribe to the pod, check out our newsletter, and also our event calendar.
And to go deeper, check out EdTech Insiders Plus where you can get premium content access to our WhatsApp channel, early access to events and back channel insights from Alex and Ben. Hope you enjoyed today's pod.
[00:01:46] Alex Sarlin: Laura k Ipsen is President and CEO of Ellucian, the leading technology solutions provider. For more than 2, 900 higher ed institutions in more than 50 countries. She has more than 25 years of experience as a technology executive in Silicon Valley, driving transformation in the public and private sectors and spurring adoption of comprehensive solutions in high growth industries at Oracle, Microsoft, and Cisco systems.
Earlier in her career, Ipsen also held leadership roles at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Acer America, and Hitachi Data Systems. Laura Ipsen, welcome to EdTech Insiders.
[00:02:25] Laura Ipsen: Thanks, Alex. It's great to be here today.
[00:02:27] Alex Sarlin: I'm so excited to speak with you. You know, we've been trying to set this up for a while, and you've been so amazing, and we have been dropping the ball.
So I'm so excited to finally sit down and really talk about everything Ellucian is doing. It is a giant in the education technology space. In the higher education space, especially let's start with something that just came out from Ellucian. You just did a big survey about AI and artificial intelligence in the higher ed space.
Can you tell us a little bit about some of the findings from that survey and how it's sort of influencing some of your thinking at Ellucian?
[00:03:02] Laura Ipsen: Sure. Well, Alex, first of all, I really see AI to be a game changer for the future of all industries, but a very powerful change agent for higher education and learning overall.
So we've been using AI for many, many years, doing things like finding defects in our software and using it in our solutioning for the R& D side. But we have this new horizon and this is our second annual AI survey. And it's so important for all of us to listen and learn before we lead the way to understand where higher education is.
And oftentimes as technologists, we like to push things along, but higher education works in really fabulous and new and different ways from the majority of the traditional industries. So we wanted to do this survey and what we found, we launched this, it was August through September, we surveyed 445 higher education faculty and administration, which covered 330 institutions here in the U.
S. and Canada, variety of sizes and shapes and types of institutions to get that full picture of what's happening, what's the feedback, and this survey really showed us that 70 percent of higher education administrators Are favorable of AI. And as we were chatting earlier, I just visited two institutions in Pennsylvania, their rivals, and both of them from the president to the CEOs to the provost are all more excited about AI this year.
Then I've heard last year, and that's real time information, but the challenge is adoption actually remains low, and there's a many reasons for that, and I'll get to some of the key data, but the biggest thing we see is we see more urgency, but there's also hesitancy because they institutions know that artificial intelligence also means that there's a level of change and change management at an institution when institutions are institutionalized for a reason can be hard.
I think very well they're focused on governance and governance around their data and certainly areas like data security. So those are the big things that they see. And all of us, including my company, we all have this learning curve. So that's what we're seeing. But let me just quickly share. What we heard from the survey results, and then I love to engage in in this dialogue, and I'll go from top to bottom of the four main themes.
78 percent feel and fear that I could negatively impact their academic integrity. I hear that when I'm talking with, you know, the academics, the faculty, the provost, uh, deans about the integrity of Of higher education, close to 60 percent reported data security and privacy. That's up nine points. And so I do think that they're learning some of the applications they've had and seeing some issues around data security and privacy.
53% Said they worry about critical thinking. I sit back and say, Hey, if every student can just have the answer, boom, ready to go. Are they really thinking about it? Are they challenging? And that's so important in the learning journey. And then finally, the fourth big takeout was 49 percent indicated they have a concern around bias in the AI models themselves.
That will rise up 13 percent year over year. Now, I'll take a pause there because one of the communities that we've been talking with early are the HBCUs, and we support 73 percent of the HBCUs. As you know, we run the ERP, the student information systems, the CRM for recruiting, advising, degree planning, advanced.
This is in particular topic for communities from the HBCUs and HSIs around biases, and it's something we all need to focus on. So these were the four areas about concerns, and then I'm happy to share a bit more about where we see the adoption trends going.
[00:06:52] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, well, let's talk about exactly that. You mentioned, you know, a few concerns that are, I think, somewhat universal in the education sector.
We've heard similar concerns coming from K 12 as well. You know, academic integrity. We just talked to someone from hood Mifflin, and they said that they were hearing, you know, over dependence on AI for students as a big issue. And I feel like that parallels what you're Correct. finding about critical thinking, the idea that students can outsource their thinking to an artificial intelligence.
Nobody knows what that's going to do, whether that's a positive or a negative. But the fact that 70 percent of administrators have a favorable view is very positive, I think, for adoption. So what do you attribute the sort of two sided ideas on AI to? People are excited and favorable about it, but also have these big concerns about bias, about integrity.
How do you think that affects adoption? Do you think that's? Sort of keeping adoption artificially low and that it'll go up in the future.
[00:07:43] Laura Ipsen: I think it's going to go up. Actually, 93 percent said that they do expect to expand their AI use for both work and personal uses. So sometimes you see adoption happening first in a consumer and then into consumers B to C, then B to B.
So the fact that many are using it for personal use. Personally, they're learning it. They're getting to understand it like all of us. And they're, they're forming opinions. So 93 percent said it's going to go up over the next two years. What we find is similar to our company at Ellucian. We have three pillars.
I look at artificial intelligence as an opportunity for greater productivity. In across my workforce, how can I take some of that administrative burden off my team so we can enjoy and explore the areas that are most critical to delivering value to helping higher education, transform using new solutions and engaging in AI.
So 80 percent in higher education. These were my conversations yesterday with CFOs, COOs and provosts around. We know that this is going to help us improve our productivity and efficiency. If we can do that, then we can free up resources for more human connections, for more personalized connections with students, which is really meaningful.
Not that every student wants to be face to face. They quite enjoy bots and online coaches, but there are always those moments that you, That students need that help. They need that personal connection and that's exciting for higher education. So just like us, that productivity, the efficiencies that they can get as they're under more financial pressure, they need to deliver, you know, increasing financial aid to their students.
That is really key. And that's where your CFOs and COOs will focus in particular. But the big area that popped for us is 85 percent are predicting that the AI use cases We'll be more engaging for predictive models, really focused on areas like enrollment, focused on student success. And at Ellucian, we really focus on supporting institutions to empower students, to have a more personalized experience and to engage them, especially if they're at risk.
So that's really exciting is that they're thinking about the data. The challenge is, Alex, that if you go across higher education, I haven't met one president, one provost, one chancellor, et cetera, that says we have all of our data at our fingertips. We know how to utilize and use it. And that's where we're focused across all of the nearly 3000 institutions that we serve to power up that data.
And that's where I think AI gets really exciting.
[00:10:15] Alex Sarlin: I think Ellucian is almost uniquely positioned, perhaps completely uniquely positioned to be really that data warehouse. So that's not the right word for it, but basically the central repository of the data because Ellucian has so many different tools.
You sort of mentioned them really nicely in passing the ERP, the student information system, SIS, the financial systems, the hiring, there's HR systems within Ellucian and, you know, prediction models and enrollment, so many different aspects to it and student engagement. There's so many different. types of data that are working within the Ellucian ecosystem that, yes, that challenge that you're mentioning of how do you get that data into a form where it can talk to each other, that different systems can actually understand that, you know, this thing happening, the academic data relates to this thing happening in the enrollment data relates to this thing happening in the engagement data and this thing happening in the financial data.
So tell us about, you know, what's your vision for how these might play together? What parts of the higher education ecosystem might benefit if this data Could talk to one another in a system like Ellucian and then use AI for productivity, predictive analytics, and all sorts of other use cases.
[00:11:22] Laura Ipsen: Absolutely. You know, the power is in all that data and what we've been working on investing billions of dollars is helping our institutions, colleges and universities move to our SAS platform. When they're in SAS in particular, it really unleashes the power of data. It connects all the data. We are a system of system thinkers.
We look at the integration of everything as much as I would love that all the technology is provided by Lucy and that's not a reality. We are passionate about the entrepreneurs in higher education, the ed tech companies that are changing personalized learning for students. So as institutions move to cloud and sass and, you know, Half of our customers will be there by the end of 2026.
That's exciting because we use solutions and capabilities like our insights. It does all the data analytics. Now pairing that with AI to bring that on, to unleash the power of data, to democratize it, not just to a few that may keep that data to themselves. But to democratize in a way that has the right protocols that has the right access so that higher education make better decisions.
So both the leaders and the faculty and students too. So AI is super powerful on that platform. And then we're also building capabilities that help students with financial aid. We had talked about campus logic and acquisition. We may That helps with financial aid with the student forms that addresses the FAFSA issues, but scholarship universe that connects students to over 100, 000 scholarships, grants and other forms of support in 30 seconds.
That uses AI. That's a game changer. The second one is Journey. We're just co developing that with George Washington University going live on Banner SAS. Journey is exciting because it maps student skill sets directly to jobs with LightCast data. That is transformational at a time where students are saying, I understand what my degree is, but what are my skill sets?
And that's a game changer when you think about the AI capabilities, but it only happens in SAS at scale to empower the entire institution and their students.
[00:13:29] Alex Sarlin: You're mentioning two paradigms in higher education that we talk about a lot on this show. One is the shift in thinking about the return on investment for higher education that we've seen over the last decade or so, whereas tuitions continue to, you know, rise and Inflation comes in, in the last few years.
And, you know, there's just been so much concern among so many people, especially, you know, around the U S and this political aspects to this as well about, you know, is college worth it? Will it get me the job and the outcomes that I really want? And I think schools have been desperate to figure out how to prove it because it is actually true.
There is still a large college premium. You, your lifetime earnings will go up by up to a million dollars if you finish college. But there's also less and less. Assuredness that that's true. So I think that the idea of this journey platform, the idea of connecting what you're doing in college to career outcomes is so important.
And then of course the enrollment crisis as well, you mentioned that predictive success enrollment. That's another thing that higher education really cares a lot about. Tell us a little bit about that. And those are connected. Of course, the low perception of ROI turns into low enrollments. Tell us about what, you know, you're in the field all the time.
You see so many different universities thinking about these things. I'm curious. What the conversations sound like within the higher ed ecosystem about enrollment issues or about sort of proving the career outcomes.
[00:14:50] Laura Ipsen: Well, first, I think we're at the most pivotal time and 100 percent two year, four year degrees associates remain highly valuable.
They are prescriptive. They have so much strength to support a student in their learning journey who understands the focus of where they're going. And maybe very specific types of jobs, whether it's, it's in business, it's in the medical field. But what we're seeing is a massive change in the workforce.
Over a billion people around the world will have to be reskilled by 2030. I actually think that's going to double when you think about the workforce evolution that we're seeing 24 months. So learners are finding new skills based resources. To amplify not just traditional students, but the non traditionals who are becoming more traditional, by the way, they're finding new ways to learn on the fly, bite sized learning, things that you see that first started happening with Southern New Hampshire University and Western Governors.
All these online capabilities now you have big tech companies like Microsoft and Google providing those skill sets based learning to amplify to make sure that the workforce is ready and things like project management and data science. So that's really exciting and valuable. So we believe it's the power of both right?
You higher education, informal, Traditional environments are helpful, either online or on campus, online learning, new skills based approaches. That's really the way of the future. Other countries have learned that apprenticeships like in the UK, and I do believe that COVID gave higher education, new skill sets, new motivations, new learnings around how this can happen differently.
So this is where it's certainly yes. The financial pressure on students and families the anxiety around all of that is provoking higher education to Be more creative in their learning channels not just for their traditional students But to use the data around those skill sets and what we're doing with journey to re engage Learners that maybe graduated from their institution or new ones to reskilling So this is I think a game changer moment You And artificial intelligence can be part of the solution to help evolve this so that you have a powerful model of learning for life.
[00:17:14] Alex Sarlin: That lifelong learning vision is such an exciting one for higher education. The idea of being able to continue connecting to alumni, continue adding value to alumni, even, you know, dare I say it for alumni who graduated with majors that are not getting them the outcomes they want. We've seen that from the bootcamp space, this sort of people jumping in and saying, You may have a college degree, but it's in something that is not, you know, technical enough to get you the kind of job you want.
Now you come back and do that. And that's frankly something that higher education institutions should own. I mean, that shouldn't be sort of outsourced to third parties. Colleges should be able to do that. And it sounds like your vision is heading in that direction.
[00:17:52] Laura Ipsen: And I really see the leaders of the pack focused on this experiential learning.
We did a program with a number of universities around using AI. JMU was one of them with interns to share how are interns going to use AI. To build products of the future so that experiential learning their internships, like making that embedding that and being very connected with higher education, new ways is critically important so that we close that gap between learning and graduation and employment.
And you'll see more and more first movers that are going to close that gap. They're going to understand and embed real world skills, get closer to the employers in the area. We provide this whole dashboard now that shows the student progression, the skills that they need, and tie it to the workforce so that we can make the case for the critical investments that education, both K 12 and higher education need holistically.
The vision on data is really to have a K 20 connected data to support students at every point of their journey. Until they graduate, go to go and get even their PhDs and beyond. So that is the part of data that we're unleashing in the platform that we can connect the data from K through 12 and we can connect it all the way into the workforce and help institutions even find new revenue streams to reactivate the learners that graduated 5, 10, and 20 years ago to make sure they're successful too.
[00:19:22] Alex Sarlin: I love that vision. And I love the way you frame that, you know, learning to graduation to career and then beyond. So it's K 20 plus, right? You know, how can the education journey be continuous rather than sort of broken up at these key periods with dropouts or broken up at a key periods with somebody graduating and not feeling like they're having the career outcomes they expected or want?
It's a really exciting vision. So you mentioned this in passing, and I wanted to double click on it because it's so interesting. You know, students Especially in higher education are very comfortable using AI. And we've seen a whole slew of ed tech tools, especially apps, frankly, that students are just embracing.
They're using them everywhere. They use them to record lecture notes and turn them into summaries and turn them into study guides, or they use them to study for tests and make flashcards. They use them to do all sorts of things and they're embracing it because, you know, for a variety of reasons. And then you have the higher education administration excited about it.
As you're finding, they're excited. They know the potential is there, but there are these still these concerns about integrity or critical thinking issues. And it feels like these things are in conflict. I'm curious how you feel like this will evolve. There's a couple of different visions, right? There's the data inside the institution that can increase productivity, increase administrative efficiency, but also, you know, help students navigate.
But then there's also. Giving students access to AI tools, which gives them all this new power, but also all this power to sort of step outside of the traditional system or do things that might be considered plagiaristic or problematic. How do you think these two types of AI are going to evolve in the higher education ecosystem?
[00:21:30] Laura Ipsen: Well, Higher education is moving much more aggressively and how they use AI, their productivity, how faculty and administration use AI, and quite frankly, the genie's out of the bottle. Whether it's higher education, tech, healthcare, the whole goal is how do they govern and embrace it in the right way. Have you know their own rules of the road because students are going to move forward They can already use tools and capabilities to diagnose, you know Did you write your paper all using generative behind chat gpt?
I think that as much as ai can do that. There are other tools that have accountability It will put an opportunity for Administration faculty to engage students in new ways to really focus on those critical thinking that creative thinking have more experiential learning more conversation versus staring at a screen in a lecture I love those companies that are making it easier for students that learn in new ways.
I just met a cool little startup company called mind grass. That's supported by Michael Chason and their CEO, Ty, who are providing those capabilities for the flashcards and downloading things and having those tools and lecture notes, but they're doing something really special, which is they're making it accessible for students that may have ADHD for students that have dyslexia.
And so they have an AI coach now, too, that's helping students. So they put something together that I think is very powerful as they move forward to personalize for students. The coaching, the how students learn, because students learn in very different dynamic ways, and that's where AI can be, again, one of the game changers that we see for students and, you know, quite frankly, improving their grades and making sure they're focused on the right things, giving them quizzes that may not come from the teacher and being more engaged with the content, bringing new content into their learning.
Because, as we all know, you don't just learn in the classroom. Learning really happens when activation of curiosity and students go beyond what's happening in the lecture and learn in new ways and new types of content. So, I'm very optimistic and excited that we're going to get it right. We'll have some tough lessons along the way, but I feel more than ever that higher education is ready for this.
They understand what students are not just asking for, but demanding, and we see more excitement around this year every year.
[00:23:48] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, that's a fantastic point. And it feels like the sort of formal education system and the informal education system are starting to See each other in a way that they hadn't in the past We recently talked to the head of YouTube for learning and she said that some humongous percentage of university students basically come back after the first lecture and Use YouTube to with they have the syllabus in hand and they use YouTube to sort of you know Get familiar with all the concepts that's going to be covered in the class and sort of almost build their own parallel syllabus for what they're going to be learning in class, because it's all available on YouTube.
It's all available there. And you want that,
[00:24:24] Laura Ipsen: right? You want that.
[00:24:25] Alex Sarlin: Exactly. You want that. And I feel like there's this really interesting moment where these used to be considered really different worlds. And I think they're starting to embrace each other. I think the Tech companies like you mentioned Microsoft and Google and the higher education institutions, which in the past have been considered very siloed, the sort of the stereotype of the ivory tower are starting to look to what each other can provide and say, Hey, we actually may be stronger together than separately.
You know, and you stand in this really interesting space sort of right between them. You have offered so many different tools, so much value to the higher education institutions and you have so much data. How do you see your relationship to the sort of tech world? And to the education world, you see yourself as a little bit of a conduit, something that's somebody who can sort of bring them together
[00:25:10] Laura Ipsen: with our SAS platform, which is, you know, doing phenomenally well, we run that on AWS, we run our CRM on Microsoft Dynamics.
So we embrace the tech companies because they're they help us scale. They're so in the ecosystem, Google, etc. I think they're doing phenomenal work to help higher education scale to move to the cloud and move to SAS. What's super powerful for us is that we believe in the integration of everything. So as higher education makes their choices around what types of technologies will help them scale, we integrate that on our platform.
All that data goes through the student information system. So being connected to the data and continuing to be open, interoperable, extensible, and secure is critical for all of us to get this right, whether it's a Lucian or anyone else. So that is super important. And it comes at a time, we had this great student survey.
It comes at a time where we know 92 percent of students expect all of their services to be in one place. And that's what our platform does. It pulls it all together. They also, quite frankly, All demand mobile. So if you're not building for a mobile platform, and we make that come alive with the Lucene experience, so they have their cards, they can see everything they need in one place, whether you're a student, faculty, administration, you have to deliver the technology that is going to be adopted quickly, that works the way that faculty, administration, and students do.
But all of that now is coming together. So when we present this on our platform, A student sees the same financial information as the bursar sees, so there's no confusion. What does that do? It just creates a better experience for everyone, especially your students. And in a time where more institutions feel competitive with each other, they need to differentiate.
And technology, quite frankly, is going to be one of the big differentiators. Absolutely their faculty, their mission, their passion for learning, the content, the ideas, the, the conversations that faculty have with their students are precious. And that can't, that doesn't happen anywhere else, but I believe the best institutions are going to embrace technology.
Their faculty will too. And we see very positive signs of that happening.
[00:27:15] Alex Sarlin: It's incredibly exciting to hear you talk about it in this way. And I think, you know, Lucien pays attention to both sides of this marketplace really carefully. I mean, you're mentioning students want mobile, so we're going to make sure to have mobile features.
We're going to make sure to have mobile access. Institutions want access to, you know, predictive analytics. So we're going to make sure to have predictive analytics. Like it's, it's really interesting to be in a product, you know, mindset that looks at both stakeholders in this very massive, complex system and is really keeping track of exactly how they're evolving.
You mentioned the financial piece with the bursar, and I'd love to dig into that because this is an area that I think is incredibly interesting right now in higher ed. We've just seen this real disaster with the FAFSA applications that really was sort of tech based for the last, you know, year. But financial aid is increasingly important for families as tuitions continue to rise.
How do you see the financial aid world and how do you think technology can help alleviate, not increase, some of the issues students face in accessing financial aid for college?
[00:28:19] Laura Ipsen: Yeah, I mean, it's been a really tough year with the FAFSA delays, and we also know the Department of Education is, is leaned in heavy duty, put more funding into this.
I'm highly optimistic that the opening for December 1st for financial aid for, for the students to submit that is going to happen. We've had a lot of communications with the community to support them. But when you step back, the reality is 75 percent of undergraduates have some form of financial aid, whether it's through Pell, federal financial aid, et cetera.
It's so important. And when students and families don't know, or they have limited time to make decisions, It is stressful. You know, we surveyed in the, in our student voice report, 1500 students, and they all say the number one issue that they have is their financial ability to pay a huge chunk of them.
19 percent said they dropped out because of uncertainty and FAFSA issues certainly didn't, did not help that almost 60%. They considered it, but they probably found other options, had additional family support, got jobs. It's been stressful at the end of the day, you know, You can't put students in a position to choose between books or burgers, right?
Students are saying, like, I'm either going to eat or get my books. And that's just, to me, unconscionable. We have to find new avenues for students to have the support they need. So many institutions have great wraparound services. We provide a path scholarship. We started that in COVID and learned that 250 or 500 can make a difference for students to stay in school.
We're almost at 2 million of giving back because we saw the stress on students. And it's just critical to do more that we help, you know, and also help institutions from making those difficult decisions. Do we raise tuition or risk losing enrollment? And they're at a tipping point right now where we do believe that technology can be helpful.
But Alex, out of this survey. The biggest issue we saw that was 78 percent of students said the financial stress negatively impacted their mental health. They said that that stress negatively impacted them over 60 percent for learning. Like they can't even focus on learning because they're worried about, am I going to have enough to eat?
I'm so stressed out. Where's the money going to come from? So this has really reached a crisis that we have to step back. I don't have the answers, but how does technology help us solve? Help us solve to be predictive of students at risk that may not be swiping their meal card because they ran out of swipes or they can't afford it, they're not going to the gym, that mental health.
Those are things that we can find in the data and to be predictive to help students at risk and to get ahead of it. And I see more institutions really focused on that's one of the most powerful use cases that they have for enabling greater student success, better outcomes, helping them on mental health issues.
It's at an all time crisis.
[00:31:15] Alex Sarlin: You know, universities have such an interesting role to play in this. You know, they're one slightly controversial take on this, and I'll throw it out there, but it might not be is that, you know, one of the root causes that a lot of people call out for the rise in tuition to continuous rise in tuition over all these years is the sort of bloating and growth of the administrative state inside higher education.
You know, you have not that many more professors, but many, many, many more employees. at these higher education institutions, which have a huge cost, which then put burden on the universities. Uh, and then, you know, the tuition continues to rise. It's not the only reason, but it's one that, that a lot of people have called out that, you know, quote unquote, administrative bloat.
And you've mentioned in this podcast, that productivity is one of the core, you know, core benefits of AI. Do you foresee a world in which higher education can embrace AI based technology to streamline its operations? Own internal efficiencies and therefore have less overhead and therefore not have to pass on some of those costs to students.
[00:32:16] Laura Ipsen: Absolutely. And what I see them doing is, the presidents are setting their strategic plan, they're driving initiatives, they're looking at where they're going to place their bet in improvement, enabling greater student success, and supporting their faculty administration. We're all faced with inflation.
Many institutions around the world have caps on tuition, so that's doubly hard. UK, you got caps on tuition, Canada has more. Then you have to say there's rising inflation and cost. You have to solve for that and we truly believe and see that higher education is gonna adopt technologies and move their data and be in the cloud to be more efficient and effective.
And then AI, AI just puts that on steroids. You gotta do it the right way, but it will show them where they can Economize where they can get economies of scale, how they can be more productive. Absolutely, I have not talked to one COO or CFO that isn't focused on this, that's not taking those use cases.
And those are the types of opportunities that we're providing, whether it's through enrollment and recruiting, their core operations, helping them You know, move their it organization to SAS, helping it roles become more engaged with the business quote unquote, business stakeholders, solving the toughest challenges across higher education versus spending their time bug fixing and patching their software holistically.
That's exciting. We see this wave happening and I believe the CFOs are going to start to measure this. And this will be part of what the boards are looking for. Like any other industry that we see, we've got to use technology to be more predictive, proactive, and to achieve that overall productivity gain.
[00:33:57] Alex Sarlin: And that emergency sort of funding, you mentioned that idea of using the internal data saying, Hey, we noticed this student, you know, didn't go to the dining hall for the last three days and their grades are slipping and they're, you know, they missed a class. These things put together show a probably financial stress on this student and for a university.
You know, not only is it sort of morally right, but it's, it's a good business decision to give that student, you know, 500 to make it through the semester, given that they're, you know, get makes them that much more likely to come back the next year. There's just so much power in the data.
[00:34:30] Laura Ipsen: 100%. And if they can engage students in the right way to support them without them, you know, many students just don't feel comfortable asking for help.
But if they say, Hey, we see, can we help you click here? Then that is invaluable to make sure that students persist that they don't drop out because when students drop out that goes right to the bottom line and it's not like they can replace them the next day that student class and maintaining the student class retaining them, connecting them to their future, either they're they're furthering their education with their masters or PhD or into the workforce.
We can use data to solve for that, to make it more effective. That just meets the needs of the workforce. It achieves the goals of higher education and you know, you're going to have some happy students.
[00:35:18] Alex Sarlin: Absolutely. I can envision a world where the development office works very differently. And instead of people, you know, donating money to a new building or to sort of the university's functioning where it could literally be a matchmaking, you know, this student needs 100 to make it through this, you know, this month.
And the alumni could just donate the 100 to get that student through the month directly. I mean, the capabilities get so exciting when you get more nuanced about how the data is being used and how the systems work. You don't have to do things with sort of a broad brush, which I think, you know, higher ed traditionally has had to do.
[00:35:51] Laura Ipsen: Absolutely. And there are many different types of scholarships and programs, but most alums are like, if a student is in need now, how do I help?
[00:36:01] Alex Sarlin: Of course.
[00:36:01] Laura Ipsen: What I think you're Really tapping into is if I can see that I helped and see what the outcomes are for that student. That's very powerful knowing that you've made a difference in a student's life that semester And that's the degree of granularity that we'll get to And you know that can be an online tap to their to the workforce that wants to Hire those students when they graduate wants to engage them in internships It's going to help them finish their degree, get the certification, whatever it is that they need.
I do believe that community is going to come together and be, be real time interactive to support the institution and an advancement office is a powerful force to help connect all that together.
[00:36:45] Alex Sarlin: 100%. Ellucian, you know, the technology structure that puts it all together is going to be vital because that is such a complex part of this that, you know, just needs to really be worked out.
And an industry leader, you know, has a real amazing capability to really push that forward. One aspect of what Ellucian does that really, you know, just Means a lot to me personally is the sort of student engagement model you mentioned the dropout rate. Sometimes dropouts that come from financial, you know, issues.
Sometimes they come from family issues or illnesses. But in many cases, you know, dropouts come because students just don't feel connected. They don't feel seen at the schools. They don't feel like, you know, whether they show up or class or not, you know, matters. They don't necessarily feel like they have connections with Faculty, and that is another issue that I think could be really, really meaningfully changed through technology and through AI.
I'm curious how you see the future of student engagement and what Ellucian would like to do to sort of make students feel much more connected and more of a sense of belonging in their universities.
[00:37:42] Laura Ipsen: Well, as more of our institutions move to SAS, and we had a couple of great weeks with Georgetown moving to our SAS platform, the Colorado Schools of Mind moving to the platform, I do see that higher education is going to see more clearly The demands and needs of students around engagement, they will be able to measure the investments they make, whether it's in the clubs that they provide the give students a place to find their people to the services that they have with their medical facilities to the mental health coaches that may be in person or online.
When you see all that data, you can make better decisions. You can form more affinity. You can understand and close the gaps that you have across your institution to make sure every student finds their place, belongs, has a way to engage within the community, with the faculty in new ways. That's just very powerful, like they need to see the data, embrace it, and make some of the tough decisions because students want to have a digital engagement.
They will vote, they will share their feedback on the surveys, that all of that can power up the holistic 360 view of of a student and their success and how much they are engaged and what's working. How do you engage your engineers in new and different ways when, you know, they're going through a stressful time, maybe some of their courses are a little tougher or tougher instructors than others.
Looking at all of that to make sure that students are healthy and they're engaged, whether it's in academics, in, My daughter is a student athlete, uh, supporting her athletes on their engagement in their, you know, what else is important to them across the board. That's what the data is going to bring to the surface, better decisions for institutions, creating more affinity and connection with their students, with their faculty and the administration.
[00:39:35] Alex Sarlin: Very well said. And yeah, I mean, the holistic, I love, you know, the way you frame this sort of holistic 360 view of a student. It feels like something that universities have wanted for a long time. It's not that universities don't want to pay attention to their students. They absolutely do. They collect data as much as they can, you know, but it just feels As you mentioned, sort of AI puts a lot of this on steroids.
You can put all of the data, all the different student behaviors, what clubs they're in, what, you know, what classes they're attending, what everything they're doing into one place. Then that holistic 360 actually becomes possible. And as you mentioned, the investments, you can actually see the returns on investment for doing things that are specifically around engagement or mental health.
What a fascinating conversation. You know, we always close out our conversations with two. I know we're coming up on the end of our time with two questions. And I'm very curious about your answers. You know, how many universities does Ellucian serve right now? Like thousands.
[00:40:27] Laura Ipsen: We're 2, 700 plus around the world, 50 countries, 22 million students.
So we see it all. We're 87 percent of US of North America institutions, the top institutions. You know, the HBCs and HSIs, 73 and 78 percent for your public, for your private, 60 percent of public institutions were running in 60 systems, North Carolina, all the community colleges, they're 58, focused on jobs and skills, moving to cloud.
It's just an exciting time to be part of the transformation, to support the institutions, and most importantly, to put those students first.
[00:41:06] Alex Sarlin: Absolutely. So with that incredible perspective, I mean, those numbers are just, you know, mind blowing, you know, when you're out in the field or when you're talking about sass and cloud or talking about a I are talking to these schools about their concerns about Enrollment or anything they're thinking about, you know, what is sort of the most exciting trend you see that maybe our listeners might not have on their radar yet.
Is there something that you see sort of coming around the corner that people are starting to think about that might be, you know, it's sort of a harbinger of what the future portends for the higher education world.
[00:41:39] Laura Ipsen: We talked about it a little bit, but I've never heard higher education talking more than they are now about the outcomes, about their opportunity to create more economic, uh, prosperity for equality, to power up the workforce, understanding that they're not there just for careers, they're there to expand student learning and, uh, Minds of students, traditional, nontraditional, but connecting to the workforce to show the value of the degree and the skillsets they're building.
That's why we create a journey. We create a journey to make sure that higher education can show and demonstrate the success of their students Through their degrees through their credentials through the skill sets not just for their first job But for life and as we do that that's going to create new revenue streams You take care of your students and they're successful and they land a job and you can show all the first destinations They're gonna come back whether it's learning on their own You Bringing their whole company back to a learning opportunity at those institutions.
And that's very powerful. Closing this gap around workforce. Reskilling is one of the top issues for not just the United States, but for every country around the world and the billion people now that have to get reskilled. I think we just double that. The workforce is changing so quickly, the demands and, and higher education will be able to provide.
The degrees and the skill sets and power up both.
[00:43:11] Alex Sarlin: That is, I couldn't have asked for a better trend to see coming. That is most exciting thing I've heard in in weeks because that I think is has been one of the sort of, you know, Achilles heels of the higher education system is not paying enough attention to these career outcomes and these life outcomes and Not as you say, not only the first job, but down the road is this, you have an economic benefit to the graduates.
It's something that, you know, they try to survey, they try to track it, but it hasn't been a focus and it feels like that is so exciting to hear that that is coming, you know, on mass amazing. And then, you know, our very last question, what is a resource that you would recommend? You know, you, you spend so much time learning about this space.
Well, obviously link to the AI survey that we've been talking about, the recent AI survey, as well as the, you know, links to. To the past ones you've done you, so you've been doing twice a year, but is there one, you know, book or newsletter or sort of resource that you would recommend for listeners who want to really understand this, this technology and higher education space better?
[00:44:10] Laura Ipsen: Certainly, I'm going to point you to Ellucian. com, our AI survey, the student voice report. This podcast that you run I'm also co hosting the ed up podcast and we're not competitive We want all of this content to be available and listening and learning from presidents Because you can see this change in mindset.
So I do believe this is a just an incredibly powerful time We're also super excited because dr. Paul leblanc joined our board You can listen to his podcast on ai You He's forming a new company. So follow him on social media. He's one of our top luminaries around the world on the intersection of AI and higher education.
So, so much to explore. And if you, if you need to learn more, go to a chat GPT and I'm learning every day, clicking on links and, and also learning from the institutions on where they're, where they're driving their thought leadership as well.
[00:45:10] Alex Sarlin: Phenomenal. And we will put links to all of those resources in the show notes for the episode.
That's the ed up podcast, Paula Blanc's podcast. We also love Paula Blanc. We've had the honor to have him on quite
[00:45:22] Laura Ipsen: highly. So he's amazing leader and the new leader, Lisa Ryerson at Southern New Hampshire. She is. Taking, uh, SNHU to new heights. So those that started with online learning, they're online and on campus.
You can really learn whether it's Southern New Hampshire, Western Governors. It's exciting to see that what was just so innovative out of the box we're learning from and all of higher education is benefiting from those leaders.
[00:45:44] Alex Sarlin: Well, I am leaving this conversation much more excited and bullish about the future of higher education than I think I've been in a long time.
I think it sounds like the things that we've been harping on in this podcast and that people like Paul LeBlanc have been talking about for decades are really starting to change the landscape and then combined with the AI. You know, capabilities, the sky's the limit. And I mean it when I say that. I think Ellucian as a market leader, as a data leader, as a leader in so many different areas of higher education, you know, technology is uniquely positioned to be at the forefront of this.
I hope more people go to your SaaS platform and onto cloud. And I'm really looking forward to seeing what happens next. Thank you so much for being here with us.
[00:46:26] Laura Ipsen: Thank you so much. This is just such a wonderful opportunity. We're on this incredible journey. I learned early about the power of education.
Both my parents spent their whole lives in higher education. One was on the faculty side. One was on administration. I'm becoming more like them, but I'm just so passionate about what we do every day to serve. Institutions around the world, their students is students and colleges and universities and new forms of learning too.
So we, as a community, it's our time to really power up, uh, learning for everyone, unleash learning for all. So it's great to be here and sharing these ideas.
[00:46:58] Alex Sarlin: Laura Ibsen is president and CEO of Ellucian, leading technology solutions provider for more than 2, 900 higher education institutions in more than 50 countries.
Thank you so much for being here with us on EdTech Insiders. Thanks, Alex. Thanks for listening to this episode of EdTech Insiders. If you liked the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the EdTech community. For those who want even more EdTech Insider, subscribe to the free EdTech Insiders newsletter on edtechinsiders.com.
