Using AI in Higher Education Enrollment to Improve Fit, Speed, and Student Satisfaction:

Changing Higher Ed podcast 267 with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Ashish Fernando

Transcript: Changing Higher Ed podcast  267 – with host Dr. Drumm McNaughton and guest Ashish Fernando

Introduction to Changing Higher Ed^®

Welcome to Changing Higher Ed^®, a podcast dedicated to helping higher education leaders improve their institutions. With your host, Dr. Drumm McNaughton, CEO of The Change Leader, a consultancy that helps higher ed leaders holistically transform their institutions. Learn more at changinghighered.com. And now, here’s your host, Drumm McNaughton.

[00:00:20] Guest Introduction and Welcome

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you, David. My guest today is Ashish Fernando, founder and CEO of EDMO and iSchoolConnect. Ashish is an education-focused entrepreneur who is leveraging AI to transform student admissions and bridge the gap between learning and the workforce through strategic, action-oriented leadership.

Ashish and his companies have with multiple higher ed institutions to improve and accelerate enrollment and admission processes using AI to make faster, fairer, and far less stressful for the student. However, with Ashish, it’s not just about tech and how many students you can reach, it’s about understanding what students want and how fast and how you can help them decide. Ashish joins me today to talk about the secret sauce that has improved the enrollment process for multiple schools, including Western Governor’s University and National University.

Ashish. Welcome to the program.

Ashish Fernando: Thank you so much, Drumm. Thank you for inviting me.

Drumm McNaughton: It’s my pleasure. I am looking forward to a great conversation.

[00:01:23] Ashish Fernando’s Background and Journey

Drumm McNaughton: You have done some amazing things in higher ed considering that your original career choice wasn’t higher ed. Tell us a little bit about it, please.

Ashish Fernando: Yeah. Rightly said, I’m actually a tech guy converted to higher ed.

Drumm McNaughton: Oh, wait a minute. Do we need to cut this off now? No tech guys allowed. No, I’m just kidding.

Ashish Fernando: Ah, that’s funny. Well, higher ed’s always been a passion because education runs in my family. My grandfather started schools in India. He worked with the archbishop, the bishops of the place I live in and I went to that school, my parents did, siblings, uncles, aunts, we, they all went to these schools. So it’s been always in my blood, in my DNA, but you know, like most traditional families, my parents wanted me to be an engineer. So, I went down that path and I came to the US, I was really lucky enough that I got admitted to the MBA program at Bentley. So I did that, I did my double masters.

And then at some point I said, “no, I want to go back to my DNA, because it’s just been bugging me”. And so I just took all the tech skills that I had gained and I said, “I’m just going to give it back to higher ed”. So here I am.

Drumm McNaughton: That’s neat. I don’t know if I’ve told you this, but I came from a higher ed background or an education background. My grandmother on my mom’s side was one of the first women to go through Mount Holyoke College, and she taught mathematics back in the early 1900’s. My mom taught home economics, and I discovered my passion for teaching when I was a flight instructor in the Navy. I enjoyed that far more than I enjoyed the flying.

Ashish Fernando: Wow. We’re seeing a pattern here. Are we, like it’s grandparents and what our grandparents did has so much impact. That’s, yeah.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah.

Ashish Fernando: People always ask me. Yeah. It’s like, why don’t you follow the path your mother or your father did? Why your grandfather, you know, I don’t have an answer.

Drumm McNaughton: I understand, folks like that have a deep influence in our lives. And when you see the impact that people can make in education, it becomes not a career, but a passion.

Ashish Fernando: Yeah, no, absolutely. You’re absolutely right. And education is, first of all, there’s so much to do in education with technology because this is where people learn and then they go build great things at an Apple or Google or wherever, so, it’s a great place to deploy good tech and it’s also the right place to do good. So it, it feels really good to be part of this vertical, this industry.

Drumm McNaughton: Thank you. Those of us who are in higher ed, and that wasn’t my first career obviously, flying airplanes in the Navy was, but thank you for what you’ve done.

[00:04:14] Challenges in Higher Education

Drumm McNaughton: Let’s talk a little bit about the challenges that higher ed has. I know trust is a big issue, cost debt. People in higher ed are looking at growing enrollment as the savior, and I’m not so sure that’s the full savior, but it is certainly part of it. What’s changed? Why have we lost that trust? You see it from a technology perspective, but you’re also seeing it from an education perspective too.

Ashish Fernando: Yeah, it’s, that’s a great question, Drumm, and there was this image that showed up on my LinkedIn feed a couple of days ago, and it was this picture of a college student from 1972 or something, don’t quote me on the year, and she held a little check that she had got, I think she was working at a supermarket or something and it said $400 or whatever that was. And then it says, cost of tuition, and then cost of rent to live both of those together, combined, still saved her $50 a month.

We’ve come from that time to now a time where people in their fifties and sometimes even sixties still have debt, and rightly said, it’s a question of trust. It’s whether I can trust the new system of higher education to actually give me the right education to then go find the right career to then not just pay back that debt, but actually help me change my life a little bit. Be able to fend for my family, for children, and that trust has been hurt, In the past, I would say two to three decades. But technology, you kind of pointed at that, I think plays a very important role in now bringing that cost ceiling back down because it can do a lot in terms of reducing the cost of creating curriculum and also delivering education once that curriculum is created.

That doesn’t mean, people losing jobs, that’s what wrongfully people think, and I love to talk to people about that particular question, but I have seen in the six years of deploying technology, I’ve actually seen how it can reduce the cost of education and bring people closer to what I was lucky enough to get, which is debt-free education.

Drumm McNaughton: And I think that’s a critical thing. I love that example that you mentioned about the student back in the seventies or sixties. Let’s put it this way, a long time ago.

Ashish Fernando: Long time.

Drumm McNaughton: And with that there was also a significant more contribution, not at the necessarily the private colleges, but at the publics, there was a significant more shouldering of the burden by the states. There was those type of “scholarships,” in-state tuition, and it’s not there now. The Great Recession took care of a lot of that type of thing.

[00:07:11] Role of Technology and AI in Education

Drumm McNaughton: But you make an in interesting point about technology and we’re starting to see, you specialize in AI, that’s what your firm does, and with applying it to enrollments. We’re starting to see some amazing things happen in higher ed with the use of technology, and it does reduce costs.

Ashish Fernando: Absolutely. Absolutely. When people think of technology, they usually get it wrong. I feel sadly I have to say that, right? Because we think of technology as a few different things. We think technology will come in and make our lives easy. That may be right, but not always. Sometimes it works in ways in which you actually don’t see it in the front end, right? So think of a prospective student coming into your institution. You can use technology to actually drive the right conversation. Like if Ashish Fernando from India applied to a school here, or he doesn’t have enough money to pay for, tuition, $140,000.

 So the main intent for Ashish is cost of tuition. Let’s say there’s a student from Europe who’s applying, comes from a rich family. That student only cares about the value and the quality of the research that they’re going to do at that institution. There might be a student who’s looking for the right sports team and not really caring so much about the education, which I know that’s a, I don’t know how to think about that.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah.

Ashish Fernando: But, that’s a true case, and technology can actually help pinpoint what that intent is way better than a human could because there’s a thousand different data points to look at. What webpages did that student go to? What did they look at? What questions did they ask the counselor? Did they send in an email? Okay, what’s the content of that email? It can actually help drive the most meaningful conversations, and you won’t see any difference in time saved or cost saved, but quality. You give the quality of the conversation, and that’s gone up 10 times now. For me, that’s what technology means. It doesn’t mean it’s going to make things faster or cheaper.

Drumm McNaughton: It, it certainly can and in many cases it does. But what I think you’re talking about is finding the right fit.

[00:09:33] Importance of Student Fit and Experience

Drumm McNaughton: Before we get down into that, we’ve got the enrollments are down, when we spoke a couple of days ago, you brought up the point, how important it is to approach this, not necessarily from the institutional perspective, but from the student’s perspective, understanding the student, understanding their mindset. What are their choices, their career choices that can lead them to an education.

Ashish Fernando: Yes. Yes. Absolutely, , and you’ve done this enough in your life and, I’m by the way, super impressed by your career trajectory and where you’ve come, you realize the importance of, like now if you were to look at your life, like the choices you made back then on what you want to study, actually affect a lot what you’re going to do in life, in your career, what job you’re going to take. And so when you think of “fit” as a student, which we tend to, by the way, forget a lot, we get all doled up in this whole “Oh yeah. Curriculum and build the right thing and put technology”. We forget about our main customer, the student, that it’s about the right fit for them. And the right fit is not just academic. We’re all trying to say, “oh, what’s the right academic fit? What’s the right skills?” It’s financial. It’s emotional. It’s aspirational. There’s a lot of things that go into what is “fit” for a student.

Drumm McNaughton: And it’s interesting you say that because right now there’s pendulum shifts, depending on who’s in the White House, who’s controlling Congress, et cetera. The pendulum’s gone from one side and slammed up against the other, and now it’s all about workforce development.

Well, if you’re thinking about your careers in that bigger perspective, like you just talked about. Yes, your curriculum needs to change, et cetera, but you’re thinking about a career and how does this particular program that I’m thinking about fit into the career that I want? I think that’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it

Ashish Fernando: Absolutely. In this day and age when our human attention spans are getting close to that of a goldfish. I hope it.

Drumm McNaughton: Is it? I’ve never heard that. What were you saying? No,

Ashish Fernando: Yeah.

Drumm McNaughton: Kidding.

Ashish Fernando: Yeah, I was just exaggerating. I hope it never gets to a goldfish level.

Drumm McNaughton: Oh, trust me. I know a lot of folks who do.

Ashish Fernando: That’s funny. But yeah, I hope we bring back our attention deficit, overall. But yeah, it’s just with all the social media and everything, so you have got to now somehow compress education and deliver it fast enough, but also effective enough, that it actually meets the students’ needs from a career standpoint. And since you mentioned the administration, not to get too political, I’m an international student. Right? And I came to this country after watching an ad on America. No, I’m kidding. I did a lot of research. But, the American dream but, , so for instance, things that happen for the, for maybe the right intentions, like for instance, yesterday there was, after the whole, thing around Harvard, yesterday, there was another, executive order that visa appointments for students worldwide coming to the US are frozen. Right? As of today, temporarily frozen, so you cannot really apply. So let’s say that temporary freeze is lifted, even tomorrow, that’s going to go back to normal, but what will not go back to normal is the sentiment. That, “oh my God, this could happen. Something random could happen and I cannot apply to the school of my dreams”.

Since four years old I had the picture of Harvard on my wall, but I cannot apply to it anymore. Why? Because, I don’t know. So there are so many things that go into the students’ emotional mindset and how they apply to school. Over time we’ve left all that behind when we think of higher ed enrollments and students. We’re really bogged down by okay, trying to meet all the industries going much faster than institutions, so now put AI in the curriculum, put blockchain and Web3 and all of that. And that student experience, I think, takes a backseat because of all of that, and technology can really help push it forward quickly.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah. Well, the other piece is you’re going to fit, we’ve talked about finance, we’ve talked about debt, we’ve talked about careers. But there’s also that emotional intelligence that is the emotional piece, the sense of belonging to a particular, whether it be, we call it an affinity group, whether it be a technology affinity group or a sports team, “I’ve always wanted to watch Georgia Tech, I’m a rambling wreck from Georgia Tech, et cetera, be able to watch their football games. This is all part of what goes into “fit”.

Ashish Fernando: Absolutely, it all goes into “fit”. And fit is, students today, they’re modern consumers. They cannot wait. They have a lot to sift through when it comes to decision making. Like when you were thinking of college back in the day, or even when I was, let’s ask you, when you were thinking of college, what options did you have? You didn’t have all the stuff that you have on the internet today to sift through and say, “oh my God, I have 30,000 options to choose from”. You probably had four.

Drumm McNaughton: Yeah. It’s funny you say that because back in my day, which was a few years before yours, thank you. When I was looking for colleges back in 1973, 1974, there were catalogs that were in the counselor’s office and you go in and take a look at those catalogs. They had to be attractive to get people to come in. And I made my decision basically on, I was accepted to the two colleges I had applied to and I ended up going to the Naval Academy, but.

There were other colleges that I looked at and I went, “no”. And then I had colleges who said, “well, you’re living in Panama. I was in the canal zone, so you have to take an English proficiency test, and I immediately “whoop, check that one off”. If they have no idea that the canal zone is English speaking, but. But yeah, there isn’t the resources there.

You brought up an interesting point there, the student, as the customer, this is something that higher ed, especially faculty have railed against, “oh, the customer’s always right”? No, the customer isn’t always right, but using AI to understand the student being the customer, there’s a whole process that you’ve done.

[00:16:34] Effective Use of AI in Enrollment

Ashish Fernando: Yes, absolutely. And that’s where we really use AI effectively. We are working with some of the largest schools now. Especially the ones that are fully online, they’re seeing a lot of value in what we’re doing with AI because they don’t get to see their customers, their students, face to face every day. They’re sitting in their homes across the nation, all of them have different desires, different needs. It’s almost impossible to make a call every week to every student to just find out how they’re doing.

So if you have an effective way to somehow transmit three important things: empathy information, and feedback gathering. These are the three things that, in our opinion, the way we build AI, we always think of these three things. Can we deliver, can we make artificial intelligence feel less artificial? And actually give that human touch, and then deliver the information we want to deliver, and then effectively get feedback without actually getting on a phone call. Once you do that, you complete a loop and now you can keep track.

Drumm McNaughton: Give us an example of this, because that’s part of empathy is what you’re talking about.

Ashish Fernando: Yes. Yes, absolutely. A really good example, this is a couple of years back when there was a travel ban for seven countries. Right? The Muslim countries or whatever that was, the Arab countries, and during that ban a lot of students who were studying at US universities were actually stuck in those countries because they had gone to see their family or something. And then overnight there was this travel advisory. So they couldn’t travel in, some of them were stuck at an airport somewhere, and this was the first time we saw the value of something as simple as a chat bot.

We do a lot of cool AI with, our understanding transcripts and documents, but chat bots are something that a lot of us understand. Most of us hate, right, because we call an airline and it says, “sorry, I didn’t get that. Can you repeat it”? But in our case our chat bot was the biggest blessing that our institutions had because this travel ban was implemented in the middle of the night and students started reaching out and they got instant responses and we had created the system in such a way that if we cannot respond to these students, we’d even develop the chat bot to actually look at their flight numbers. If they gave us their flight ticket, we would track the flight and actually know where they are, whether they landed, send them a text, keep engaged continuously.

If something was really going wrong, which it did in a few cases, we directly would inform, just through technology, inform the emergency folks at the institution, be it the police department or international student services in most cases. “Hey, please give a call to the student and here’s the summary of what we spoke about. This student needs help. They need a document or they need something else”.

It was so effective, Drumm, using technology because you’re talking international. So you know, folks on the East Coast are in their deep slumber, some student is facing an issue in Turkey, and so just having technology there, that for me is my biggest example of effective use of technology in the right way.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, you’re talking about having personalized messaging, things along those lines. AI is wonderful for those type of things, for validating documents, streamlining the credit evaluations, et cetera. But the example you just gave, think about it and, I’ve lived overseas 19 years, long, long period of time, lot of international travel. I can remember going to Saudi Arabia one time and standing in one line for an hour, somebody puts me over to another line standing that one for an hour back to the same line, and then my per, oh yeah. And the person who was meeting me had the wrong flight time. I was 55 at the time, something like that, I traveled enough to know not to panic, et cetera, just go on, do what I need to do. But when you’re talking about somebody who’s 20 years old, who doesn’t have those kind of experiences, just having, even if it’s a chat bot reaching out and if you’ve got a problem, that chat bot being able to get in touch with the right people to say, “Hey, John, Mary, Pedro, Maria, they’re having a problem. Get in touch with them”.

Ashish Fernando: Yeah.

Drumm McNaughton: That’s huge.

Ashish Fernando: That’s huge. And giving your chat bot a character rather than calling it an AI. So like the stuff we do with NYU. Right? The chat bot actually has the character of their mascot, “Bobcat”. And because Bobcat is their mascot, guess what the chatbot’s called? It’s called Bob Chat,

Drumm McNaughton: I love it.

Ashish Fernando: And students love it. They feel character, they feel connection. It’s the mascot, it’s the color of the school, and if you send like images and gifs and things like that, now students really will feel that connection. So there’s so many subtle little things you can do with technology to bring that human emotion forward because it’s needed.

Students are high touch, parents are even more high touch, they want to know that their kid is taken care of. So that’s where we’ve started seeing a really new era, of AI where it’s actually starting to get less artificial, more human. And so I’m excited for that.

Yeah.

Drumm McNaughton: Oh yeah. As you well should be. And there’s a lot of good uses besides what we’ve talked about. Other things, like some of the things I’ve heard, I haven’t seen it because I don’t get into this type of thing. Using it for your enrollment funnel, there are certain times when human judgment is really important to have. There’s also times where, if it’s just gathering information, whatnot, why do you have a human wasting his or her time doing that when they could be doing something more like creating belonging?

Ashish Fernando: Yes. You said it, Drumm. The enrollment funnel is the most important driver for an institution. Period. Because it’s what builds the entire marketing, the brand of the institutions, and then attracts the right students. So as an institutional leader, your first focus has to be there. because if you do that wrong, post-enrollment delivery is going to fail, because you brought in the wrong students and you’re teaching them the wrong way. Your completion rates and persistence is going to fall, because you got the wrong student in. And therefore, your six months post-graduation job satisfaction is going to fall. because you now have all these students who are like, they studied something else and then now doing something else.

The enrollment funnel is pivotal to an institution’s transformation to become the best out there. And so it’s not just about making your funnel better, it’s about redefining it. For the new age, for the new era for the new student, and help students make better decisions. Like when you pick an airline to travel, today you don’t even need to talk to somebody. You can be almost pinpointed. That’s it.

Drumm McNaughton: On the phone.

Ashish Fernando: On the phone. On the phone, yeah. And how many minutes? You can probably get the right flight that you want in like under three or four minutes.

Drumm McNaughton: Exactly.

Ashish Fernando: But you needed a travel agent back then who would do all the research for you. What’s the right cost? How much time can I spend? Now it’s filters. Why should a student not have that when they apply to an institution based on their prior learning? Can they not know what’s the right fit program for me at your institution? What am I going to learn from it and what job prospects? And then have a conversation around what’s most meaningful, which is how much am I going to spend on it? Or what’s the sports team? Will I be part of it? Like all these questions, you have got to deal with that at the enrollment stage and we will automatically see persistence go up. We’re automatically going to see that enrollment cliff problem that everybody is so worried about actually diminish.

Drumm McNaughton: I think you’ve hit on a key thing. Most institutions are focusing on getting as many students in as they can and providing the support services. What I’m hearing you say is, get as many of the right students in, and then provide them the support services that they need. But because you’ve got the right support, you’ve got the right students, then you don’t have to have quite as many support as necessary because you’re not going to have as many, I don’t want to call ’em problem children, but you’re not going to have as many students who aren’t a good fit. That’s going to lead to better persistence, better graduation rates, and better post-graduation evaluations because they got taught what they wanted to know, and they could go out and find the job in the area they wanted.

Ashish Fernando: Yeah, absolutely. I always tell people, “there is always the right student who’s out there for Harvard or for a community college that’s like two miles away from Harvard. There’s always a right student, and the student for that community college is not fit for Harvard and vice versa”. It’s about reaching out to that right student the right way and delivering the right way. I have dedicated all of my time to solve for that one problem using technology.

[00:26:35] Future of AI and Technology in Education

Drumm McNaughton: And I think it’s really important to also talk about where it’s not appropriate to use technology and AI. It’s about human judgment.

Ashish Fernando: Yes, absolutely. So the easiest way to think about this is any type of mundane, repetitive activity that requires analyzing a document or communicating via email, which is a standard email for like financial documents or transcripts or things like that. Those are the things you want to automate. You don’t want a human spending their precious time trying to do something a machine today can do so much more better. I have to say it. Machines are learning from years and years of looking at transcripts, all the transcripts that have come in, and they can make a better decision.

But can a machine make a better decision at understanding human empathy? The nuances of body language? When a student is talking to a counselor and the student says something, but actually means something completely different, those are the kind of cues that today at least, and I think for the next few years to a decade, I think AI is going to find it hard to do that. So it’s in the word an admission “counselor”. Your counselor, your job is to not just take every word that a student says or their parent says by face value, but actually read between the lines. What are they looking for? And that’s where you deploy more of human capacity, I feel, and that’s the best way to do enrollment.

Drumm McNaughton: I think you’re absolutely right. An example comes to mind of actually two of them Perdia Education, who’s put the entire enrollment process on the telephone for multiple colleges. That’s to me a good example of AI. The other one is David Decker at Franklin University. They have their transfer process so nailed down, they’ve got over 1200 college courses, transcripts, to where a student who wants to transfer to Franklin can do so, and within five minutes, or somewhere in that vicinity, they know if they’re accepted, they’re not accepted, how many credits will transfer, et cetera. They know everything.

Ashish Fernando: Yeah.

Drumm McNaughton: To me that goes to one of the comments you said the other day. “Speed to decision is a new differentiator in enrollment”.

Ashish Fernando: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for remembering that. Yeah. Speed to decision is all about that precision and that student satisfaction. Also a lot of schools, when I go in and I tell them, “yeah, great, you like what the technology does and how fast it’s going to do things, but can we please spend two, three months more like a, just a consulting gig?” Because in a lot of cases the processes are already broken and you don’t want to automate a broken process. because when you do that, you basically just get faster dysfunction. That’s what happens.

Drumm McNaughton: I love it. going to borrow that one.

Ashish Fernando: Yeah, it’s like, so automate a broken process. So I’m like, I always tell schools, “can we spend some time?” ” Oh no, we are going to spend more money”. No, you’re going to actually save money over time by redesigning some of that journey and then digitizing it, and then automating it, and then you’re going to actually scale it really well. Right? And it’s not just a rip and replace “oh yeah, Ashish, you came in, so tomorrow, can we just replace all of this?” No.

So like to your point, some schools have thought about it and then done it right. Schools that come to mind, Western Governors great example. They’re doing 140,000 enrollments a year. That’s a lot to be able to manage that at scale. And their enrollment experience is really, really robust. They call it self-service enrollment, so to your point, it should feel like self-service for the student, like I’m picking an airline or whatever, and I’m feeling good about it. I saved money, I picked the right seat, I got the right time zone when I’m getting there, all of that.

So just keeping that and working with schools like Western Governors and now with National University and doing it at that scale with institutions that are open to say, “yeah, some of our processes are broken. Can we identify those, split those out, maybe redefine those, or just automate the remaining that’s actually already feeling good?”

It’s the best way, and it’s one of my takeaways from all the different types of work I’ve done with institutions.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, you bring us full circle, back to the student is the customer, and you’ve got to be able to put yourself in the student’s place to see if it makes sense or not. That is the key to systems thinking or holistic thinking as we call it, is put yourself in their place. That old saying, “don’t give advice unless you walk a mile in my shoes”.

Ashish Fernando: Yes, yes, yes. And then walk an extra mile.

Drumm McNaughton: and then extra mile, because you need the exercise.

Ashish Fernando: Yeah, exactly.

[00:31:53]

Drumm McNaughton: Ashish, this has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you. I’ve learned a lot and certainly hope that our guests who have gotten this far into conversation have as well.

Ashish Fernando: Thank you. Appreciate it, Drumm, appreciate the honest questions and just the kind of banter we’ve had here. This is really what we need in higher ed is we want to make change while we’re having fun. I really cherish those kind of conversations with people in higher ed, so thank you for that.

[00:32:19] Three Takeaways for Higher Ed Presidents and Boards and Enrollment Officers

Drumm McNaughton: Likewise, my friend. Three takeaways for higher ed presidents and boards. What do they need to be thinking about to infuse AI and technology, to improve their enrollment processes?

Ashish Fernando: So for me, the number one, as simple as it sounds, is think from “outside in”. So think of student goals. We’ve talked about it a lot, what the student wants before they come in. Think less about the org chart and the curriculum and things that you have to fix inside. Think “outside in”, number one most important piece that a lot of people forget. Like I was at NAFSA yesterday, which is one of the biggest international student conferences, around 10,000 people or so. And you go to all these sessions and it’s all about fixing curriculum and AI and I’m like, “where’s the student in our conversation”? So bring the student to the conversation.

Second important takeaway is that speed is the strategy in the current day and age. When students have so many options, and they have so much to choose from and they make decisions very quickly, use speed as a strategy.

And that brings me to the third and important takeaway because it’s tied in, and it’s a good segue into my third takeaway, which is AI is part of that strategy that creates that speed. So think of AI as the tool to just amplify speed to the student with accuracy and hopefully empathy that a human has. There are ways to create that empathy and I feel like takeaways since 2024, I’ve updated my takeaways for higher ed and AI is now part of a takeaway because it’s here and we’ve been dissatisfied with it and what it’s been doing for the last few years, like every piece of technology, it breaks initially till a point where we humans perfect it. We figured it out. And have we figured AI out fully? No. But we’re almost there, we can see the signs that it’s going to be the future. We have got to embrace it. We have got to make it part of our culture, just like in every other industry. And I’m happy to be the catalyst for that change. I’m very pro AI. At the same time I’m double “pro human”. That’s just, that’s just who I am.

Drumm McNaughton: Very good. Thank you. And I’m just going to relay a little bit back to your second point about speed. It is so critical because the research has told us, and I hate to use the term the research has told but that’s it. The marketing has told us that students now may apply to a number of different colleges, and the first one that gets back to them with the acceptance, the majority of the time, that’s who they go with.

Ashish Fernando: Yes. Yes, absolutely. You said it, and I think I may be, quoting it wrong, but that’s kind of what proximity bias is. Right? So like the proximity of asking the question to getting an answer. In most cases, we make it the right answer.

Drumm McNaughton: Asish, what’s next for you? What’s next for your companies?

Ashish Fernando: Very interesting question. I know you asked me to think about this question and I spent a little bit of time there, and for me, I, I love doing what I do with enrollment and what our company is bringing to the market, to institutions, but I think my final satisfaction point and, kind of my nirvana moment, will come when I’m not just doing enrollment and fixing enrollment, but I’m actually fixing careers and jobs. Once we get the student to the right institution, we then unlock that ambition and actually get them to the right workplace. That’s going to Be the next phase of what I’m going to be thinking once I’ve solved this and everything’s done and dusted and the world says, “oh, the stuff Ashish built, it works and it’s great in enrollment”. We have got to move to that.

Drumm McNaughton: Well, I want to thank you for coming on. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation and I look forward to the next time that we get a chance to do this.

Ashish Fernando: Me too. Thank you so much. Appreciate everything.

Drumm McNaughton: Thanks for today a thank to guest, Ashish Fernando. Ashish, thank you for a wonderful

conversation, very stimulating and gave me a lot of food for thought. Thank you.

To my listeners, thanks again for tuning in. I look forward to seeing you next week.