Degrees of change

It’s a challenging time for the higher education sector, with institutions facing a demographic cliff, affordability issues and questions about the value of college degrees in today’s society.

“Since many of these challenges are financially driven, schools need to start looking at what opportunities exist to drive the greatest return on the investments that they still need to make,” explains Kim Fahey, President and CEO of Collegis Education.

The Illinois-based provider of tech-enabled services helps educational institutions enhance their operations, attract and retain students and achieve better educational outcomes.

“This comes down to the school’s data, tech and talent: focusing on how to make better use of data and understand how it can help drive technology and power automation so schools can better leverage their human capital,” she says. “This is becoming a tremendously important part of higher education.”

When a school has those three things aligned, it can make decisions faster than before. But the rapid rate of technological change, especially in the field of AI, is posing another challenge for schools, which are trying to keep up with the pace.

Flip the switch

AI is on every business’ mind at the moment and Fahey knows the tool can help solve some of the real challenges that schools are experiencing.

“Using AI and predictive analysis creates a competitive advantage for schools and enables them to deliver superior experiences, both digitally and in person,” she says.

But she also cautions that there are foundational technology and governance needs that must first be implemented before they can begin to leverage such emerging technology.

“Many industries have been on a digital transformation journey for years, which includes cloud migrations, cyber security, systems integration and access to critical data. But unfortunately, many schools are years behind in implementing these capabilities, and all are prerequisites to ensuring optimal AI performance,” she says.

These foundations need to be set before AI starts to deliver value in the workplace.

“You can’t just flip the switch and turn those on. It’s an evolution,” Fahey adds.

When Fahey and her colleagues at Collegis share with schools that they lack the basic foundation to harness emerging technology, it’s not the message that they were hoping for.

“However, what we find is that this transparent and honest approach builds a tremendous amount of credibility and, ultimately, a lot more success with them once we become a partner,” she explains.

In a market brimming with AI vendors offering a quick-fix solution that doesn’t always work, Collegis’ ability to lay out its approach and findings step-by-step is one of the factors that sets it apart.

“Of course, you need a balance, and you have to secure quick wins that show incremental value along the way with more self-contained AI solutions in areas like content development or AI chatbots,” she says.

“Like every business, we want to close deals, but what we really want is to help set up higher education for success. To help schools achieve their goals and live their mission.”

Data-enabled

While many schools have been using data for quite some time, Fahey cautions that there is a big difference between a data-driven and data-enabled approach.

“Yes, you may have data, and lots of it, and are even using it to inform your strategies and approaches, but more often than not, that data is in a silo. We take a step back and work with the school to truly understand what they have end-to-end from a technology, integration, data, process and system perspective,” she says.

“We then can take it a step further and start to build out a road map for them that shows how they can integrate systems differently to collect and connect the data so that they can drive the right activations to make better decisions quicker.”

Typical areas where Collegis can lean in and help include driving better student outcomes by leveraging data to optimize course and learning experiences. For example, it can identify which assessments and sections over or underperform, Fahey explains, quantifying learning outcome and gauging student retention of material.

It’s a mixed reaction from schools once they step back and see the results.

“It can be very overwhelming for schools to see the current state and all of the potential challenges that they have within their environment,” she reveals.

Pair that with Collegis coming in showing pathways to a future state, and determining where to start out of the gate can seem like an extremely daunting task. Yet by starting with the big picture mission and strategic direction, Collegis is able to build an agile and logical plan and prioritize key actions to implement and achieve maximum impact.

“We clearly outline dependencies and areas of ownership on both sides of the partnership. We also help quantify the work to give schools a clear ROI and expected outcomes,” she says.

Fahey came on board as Chief Information Officer in 2014 when the leaders of an established university decided to spin out the marketing, recruitment and technology functions – as well as online content management – and build Collegis as a new company. She explains that the intersection of technology and education is a passion.

“There are so many schools that are decades behind in how they use technology to drive their institution forward,” she says.

“At Collegis, we not only have the best-in-class technology, but since we have run a school before and many of the leaders here were part of a school, we know how you can leverage technology to differentiate the student experience from the very first interaction you have with that student until the time that they graduate and eventually become an alumni.”