Human-first, tech-enabled: A smarter AI strategy for colleges
Are college losing their value prop enticed by AI's promise?
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I’m writing because education wasn't designed around students but we can improve the learner experience through design. I share stories, tips, and work in progress weekly.
Why it matters: AI is revolutionizing education—but are institutions chasing hype or true value? As AI adoption accelerates in higher ed, leaders must reflect on what students are really "hiring" colleges for. Are institutions leveraging AI to enhance core strengths, or are they outsourcing their value proposition without strategic intent?
Go deeper:
With the AI Show and ASU+GSV less than a week away, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited. Downtown San Diego abuzz with education innovators, technologists, and investors, filling calendars with connections to folks I’ve connected with online and yet to meet in person, or catching up over coffee with old colleagues and friends.
In fact, I’m hosting a "Rooftop Connections” gathering with the Educators Alliance at UC-San Diego Design Lab to bring together a fantastic group with this amazing view.
I’m excited to see what people are learning about AI in education, and these forums are important. But if I’m honest, I’m a bit torn. I’m far from a luddite, but I’ve been sitting back and watching the trends and have a nagging feeling that we might be getting distracted by the hype.
I started this conversation online a few months ago on Linkedin as I wrestled with the role of “hand-offs” between AI and humans on campus.
But with some more time to think about it (and lots of great commentary), it brought me to a more fundamental set of questions about education. First, a story.
Helping campus leaders self-assess the road to change
Several years ago, I built an exercise for a project designing a new academic model. To help us drive leadership decisions about the learning priorities of the model, we broke apart the student experience and “features” of the college value proposition into 5 “C’s” to keep the conversation broad. They were:
Cost
Curriculum
Community
Career
Coaching
Leaders self-assessed their value proposition compared to the future-state model they hoped to design (one that we knew drastically reordered these features). The exercise was meant to surface the tension of what they did well today against the competencies they would need to develop to achieve the desired end state, and help the team prioritize the student research and testing we should pursue to understand student needs, motivations, and behaviors to influence the design.
As I see the latest AI products and applications, I’m having flashbacks to the solemn reflection of the leaders in that room as they realized just how drastically different the project they were undertaking was compared to their current strengths. And that despite the tension and realization of the challenges ahead, that being successful as an institution would require that evolution.
What “job” are students “hiring” college for and what role should AI play?
When I look back at that exercise, I bristle at the missed opportunity to frame the conversation around “jobs-to-be-done” and helping leaders clarify what students who would be attracted to each of the academic models they were pursuing were “hiring” their institution for. I think it would have been even more powerful in demonstrating the challenges ahead.
So when I fast forward today to the adoption of AI on campus and the decisions that leaders are making, I wonder to what extent this reflection has a place in their approach. I wonder how many leaders are considering on the trade-offs in their value proposition by pursuing the latest AI project. I wonder how well leaders are able to identify what they do best on campus (either in the “jobs” their students “hire” them for, or in the broad features mentioned above), and the tradeoffs of acquiescing those jobs to AI over their current processes or approach.
Don’t get me wrong, I think there is a valuable, powerful, role that AI can play in education. As I was shaping my thinking on this topic, I watched a great panel from the HAI Summit at Stanford and learned “93% of people use Youtube for some form of learning or informational intent” (Shantanu Sinha, GM Google for Education), and I think AI will match or surpass this kind of adoption.
But seeing the number and range of applications of AI for education today and the way that institutions are adopting them, I wonder if the pressure of AI adoption just showcasing the vulnerability of institutions struggling to clarify and communicate what they do best under the pressure of what they think is expected of them to maintain relevance?
Sure, AI can serve as a chatbot for coaching, but are those interactions that should be automated? Yes, AI can review work, summarize and offer feedback, but isn’t that expert perspective why students are enrolled with Professors with expertise in that discipline?
AI is already changing the way we work, live, and learn. We’ve only begun to see the depth, breadth, and scale of the impact. But what are students/employers/communities “hiring” college to do for them, and what is central to that experience? A step further, what is lost by pursuit of AI without a clear understanding of the (prioritized) problems it’s solving or the needs its addressing on campus? Maybe most importantly, how do we measure and develop and understanding that AI is having the positive impact that we hope it’s having on the student experience?
I’m not suggesting AI will replace people, coaching, teaching, or education as a whole. But products and opportunities to give away critical interactions core to the value proposition of the experience are in motion, and leaders will need to evaluate what’s appropriate to “give away” to robots.
AI isn’t going away. It will become part of education, as it should. But we must reflect on how AI should shape the experience of our campus, informed by the perspectives of stakeholders.
Questions for reflection:
What do students value most in their experience with your institution?
What keeps them there? What holds them back?
Where does AI reduce friction that students are experiencing today and when does there need to be a hand-off to higher touch human interaction?
How are we assessing the value of AI-first vs. human interactions on campus
How are we evaluating the AI-first interactions that can make time *in person* higher value rather than replacing these interactions altogether?
How do we shape AI based on what we know about human-first interactions and places where efficiency can be gained that leads to more, high-quality human interactions?
Why human-skills matter in a robot-driven world
As a former coding bootcamp campus director, I saw the promise of learning how to code to create opportunity economic mobility. And then overnight, we woke up to a world where AI could do what it took those aspiring junior developers invested 12-weeks to learn. Education is not just about skills or content, and in the world of AI, if you can learn it on YouTube or ChatGPT, then AI might be able to figure out how to bring that task to life through automation that is more efficient and effective than humans.
So in a world where AI and automation can carve out significant parts of jobs or whole rungs on the career ladder, human-skills become the most critical to succeed in adding value in careers and life.
College is a valuable environment to develop those skills: in community, through coaching, and in career-relevant ways. Empathy, creating problem solving, critical thinking, resilience, communication (the skills that employers have been desperately asking for colleges to shape and deliver for decades) become even more critical in an AI-forward world. It’s why the decision-making around what we’re willing to “let” AI do on campus is so important.
Those intentional experiences with real people, through real connection, developing the character and social skills of everyone they interact with are part of that human cultivation. With intentionality, reflection, and feedback, college becomes a powerful accumulation of experiences that develop humans. As a student affairs professional and a leadership educator, it was the purpose that brought me into higher education in the first place. And in an AI-driven world, that role is even more critical.
A future post might even suggest that design as a skill set is uniquely positioned to create human-centered humans and cultivate those skills.
A path forward
Ultimately, the challenge I’ve described is one that intentional service design can help address. And one that students, faculty, communities, and employers should weigh in on. These tools should guide both the college experience, completion, AND preparedness for work. How?
Get curious. Go talk to students, faculty, staff, communities, and employers about what they value, what they struggle with, and what they need. Map out their journeys. Identify pain points, surprises, and insights.
Consider what’s possible. Explore ways to address those needs. Come up with lots of alternatives. Prioritize what you need to learn and what to test first.
Let’s test it. Move to action. If there’s a legitimate opportunity for AI to address a challenge, start with a small test. Maybe even start with human interactions that you think might be someday replaced with AI and complimented with more intentional, high quality in-person interactions. Make it cheap and fast. Test it quickly. Learn and adapt (because you will be wrong). And then build with (increasing) confidence.
A hopeful note for preparing future designers
The Jacobs Teen Innovation Challenge is a global virtual competition that empowers students aged 13-18 to become changemakers by using design thinking to develop innovative solutions to real-world problems. Aligned with the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), this challenge encourages teens to tackle pressing social, economic, and environmental issues in their communities and beyond using designed. I’m excited to be a judge for this year’s competition!
Going to ASU+GSV? Let’s connect!
If you’re attending or will be in San Diego during the conference, reply to this email and let’s find a time to get together. I’ve got stickers!
Insights from the Field
Bringing you voices from across education to answer:
What advice would you give to someone driving change in education?
“Always start with a laser focus on who you wish to serve and go deep on the “job-to-be-done.” What are learners asking of you, what is it they want to accomplish when they give you their valuable resources (their money, their time, their attention), how do they need you to deliver what you offer? In education, we are biased towards the “supply side” - -what we want to do or offer. That’s why education fails far too many or leaves them dissatisfied and unhappy.
When we understand the job-to-be-done, then identify the most important human and relational components in what you offer – the human interactions that make a real difference (and why) – and hold that ground sacred, using technology to automate and scale everything else in your program or offering. Too often, we look to use technology for as much as possible, grudgingly accepting some inevitable and costly human components. Flip the equation: embrace the core human functions and then let technology take care of everything else.“
Paul LeBlanc, Former President, Southern New Hampshire University
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