As AI applications continue to evolve within higher education, understanding their impact on the educational ecosystem is essential for prioritizing the student experience and driving institutional success.

Ellucian’s 2nd Annual AI in Higher Education Survey explores the perceptions, applications, and opportunities surrounding AI-infused technologies among higher education administrators. This year’s findings highlight AI’s growing influence, revealing its transformative value while addressing challenges and opportunities for the future.

Here are some key recommendations for institutions to kickstart their AI implementation:

Provide Training and Development Support for Faculty and Staff

For higher education institutions to embrace AI securely and ethically, ongoing and comprehensive training is essential. A few strategies for institutions to implement include:

• Offer foundational AI training modules that integrate into their existing annual technology training programs, ensuring broad adoption and understanding.
• Deliver on-demand, role-specific AI training tailored to faculty, administrators, and staff, helping them unlock AI’s potential in their unique workflows.
• Host regular workshops to deepen knowledge of emerging AI tools and use cases, empowering users to stay current with technological advancements.

Establish an AI Governance Body for Clear Guidelines and Policies

Developing comprehensive guidelines ensures the ethical and transparent use of AI, particularly in academic settings. Key steps include:

• Collaborate with faculty to define ethical policies and standards that balance AI support with academic integrity, ensuring students understand acceptable practices.
• Form a cross-functional AI governance committee to oversee AI implementation, address ethical concerns, and evaluate outcomes.
• Update academic integrity guidelines to reflect AI’s evolving role in teaching, learning, and assessments.

Prioritize AI Use Cases and Allocate Budget Accordingly

AI has transformational potential that could be tapped into across every functional area of a college or university. To maximize ROI and outcomes, institutions can:

• Identify high-ROI, mission-aligned AI use cases to maximize value and outcomes.
• Support grant identification, resource pooling, and cross-departmental collaboration to fund AI initiatives.
• Provide tools to measure ROI and efficiency gains, enabling institutions to allocate budgets strategically and demonstrate impact.

Work to Ensure Equity of Access and Equity of Outcomes

Those with access to AI technology stand to outperform those without. To ensure that all students and staff are operating on an even playing field, institutions should work to make sure that every member of their community has access to the same AI tools and resources.

Additionally, given the widespread interest in using predictive analytics and the growing concern about bias in AI models, institutions must be engaging in regular structured evaluations of the outcomes of any predictive analytics models used on campus. Such evaluations should include an examination of outcomes data disaggregated across groups of interest to ensure that models are not accidentally perpetuating systemic inequities.

Institutions can also:

• Form cross-functional AI governance committees to establish ethical AI use and evaluation policies.
• Provide guidance on revising academic integrity policies to address AI’s influence on teaching, learning, and assessments.
• Offer solutions that promote data readiness for predictive analytics while ensuring transparency, explainability, and accuracy.

Tech Providers Take the Lead

For higher education institutions to trust and adopt IA, tech providers must lead by example, prioritizing transparency, sustainability, and collaboration.

Focus on Sustainability

• Commit to transparent communication regarding the environmental impact of your technologies through the publication of an annual AI Impact Report. Given the concerns voiced by institutional stakeholders, this sets a standard for openness and annual reporting will ensure that the issue remains top of mind.
• Deepen organizational commitment to sustainable practices by collaborating with faculty experts in environmental science and engineering to identify ways to accelerate the development and implementation of solutions to these pressing sustainability issues.

Foster Transparency

A hurdle for AI is to overcome its adoption in a high-stakes environment. Users at institutions (e.g., HR, finance) are concerned about making risky decisions based on faulty output and AI hallucinations. In these high-stakes applications, institutions can work to ensure:

• Generative AI and predictive analytics outputs include clear step-by-step explanations of how conclusions were drawn.
• Reference source materials are efficiently cross-checked by the human user to foster confidence.
• Controls are in place to assure users that they can trust AI in their use cases.

Provide Training for AI Solutions

Tech providers should offer on-demand training for AI solutions to support their practical use. Tailor trainings to the specific needs of various department end users to ensure they meet the diverse use cases across institutions. This proactive approach benefits institutions and your company by promoting alignment and efficient adoption.

Establish a User Community

Data shows that executive leaders are excited about AI and its growth at their institutions. End users, however, still vary in their adoption, and a plurality of administrators indicated that collaboration and knowledge sharing across higher education would help support their adoption of these technologies.

To meet this need, tech providers should establish Communities of Practice for their solutions, creating opportunities for administrators across institutions to share best use cases, discuss challenges, and learn from each other. These Communities should be moderated by AI leaders from your company to fill knowledge gaps and ensure active participation.

Shaping the Future of Learning Together

Higher education is at an inflection point. Institutions must future-proof against new and existing challenges while delivering lifelong value to their students. By integrating AI into purpose-built, student-centered solutions, Ellucian empowers institutions to unlock innovation, improve student success, and future-proof their operations.

Ellucian is leading the way for the AI revolution. Trained on the richest dataset available in higher education, our AI-powered solutions accelerate how institutions deliver student success. Learn more about Ellucian student-centered AI solutions and download the 2nd Annual AI in Higher Education Survey.