AI is blowing up education (is it a good thing?)

Hey hey!! Happy new year friends! I hope you’ve each had the opportunity to rest/relax/recover over the holidays. Maybe you got some time to reflect on the past year and ponder the future, or maybe you didn’t.. either way I hope it was awesome.

As a parent of 2 (soon to be 3 in April!), something I’ve been chewing on for awhile is what does AI mean for my kiddos? How should I prepare them? What will jobs and work look like in 10 years when they enter the workforce? This is also something I keep hearing from fellow parents and clients.

As we enter the new year, it will become even more important to think about how AI will completely reshape education, and how we should think about it.

Before the holidays I sat down with Michael Trivette, cofounder at College Transitions, who is a client of ours at StealthX. They help high schoolers and their parents get ready and get into their target college/university. Michael spends his days helping families navigate the college prep and admissions process. He and his partners have also built a steady flywheel of resources including a national college guidebook, a deep “dataverse” of school data, and a new digital platform called Gateway (p.s. we helped them define the strategy, build and launch the MVP for this product 😉).

We spent some time talking about the impact of AI on education. Three big patterns stood out to me:

In the last 12-18 months, there’s been a lot of talk a lot about good tools. The real differentiator is (and will always be) good judgment. The market is shifting from narrow skills to adaptable thinkers and that shift really favors the college programs that focus on critical thinking, synthesis, communication, and relationship skills. Michael sees more families considering the liberal arts path for that reason.

The point is not to trade or sacrifice technical depth. It’s to pair domain knowledge with the ability to connect dots, ask better questions, understand human patterns and psychology, and communicate effectively (clear and in a way that’s persuasive/influential).

Those are the skills that AI can’t replace.

It’s never been easier to apply to anything. College, jobs, grants, loans.. with this spike in volume comes more AI/algorithm-powered triage that introduces new problems.

Colleges are open about using AI to surface files that meet basic thresholds. Employers are doing the same with resumes. The risk here is pretty obvious. Strong applicants who don’t match the pattern will get filtered out by AI/automation before a human ever even sees their application. There are a TON of implications here including side effects on equity, equality, diversity and unintentionally screening out really valuable applicants that don’t match certain criteria on paper but have the X factor that can only be seen/measured through qualitative measures (case studies, stories, evidence, relationships, etc.).

Michael and his team coach families to think in two stages:

He also reminded me of the other side of the desk. Staff are drowning in a crazy increase of applications because AI makes it easier to quickly generate an application, so they’re relying on AI tools to help with screening/triage. We all have to think and plan with this reality in mind.

Side note, if you’re a parent with a high school considering their next step.. Michael shared a few helpful tools in the episode to figure out the path after high school:

College Transitions has spent years “stacking bricks” as they call it. For them this has been investing in building strong long-term relationships and building brand equity through their college guidebook (now on its sixth edition), investing in a library of data and resources for counselors, parents and students, sharing useful content weekly, and being feature in national media.

These aren’t short term moneymakers, they’re long term trust builders. That trust creates the margin to experiment with new products like the Gateway and it softens the blow as organic traffic from search engines has evaporated over the last year.

6 years ago a former client of mine made a simple state to me that I’ll never forget, “Decades not deals.” In an AI world where knowledge is abundant and speed is cheap, the brands and people that invest in the long-term with unique, memorable, and differentiated positioning, value, and experience will win.

Education (like everything) is being transformed by AI and automation.

As we look ahead, I encourage everyone to invest in teaching and learning higher-level strategy and complex reasoning skills (e.g., What is a good idea? How do I know it’s a good idea? How can we connect the dots to actually realize this idea?) and people/relationship skills (see also How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie).

Here are a few ways you can put this week’s newsletter into action:

These have (and will continue) to stand the test of time and position you, your team, and your family for the AI-powered future the world is careening towards.

Onward & upward,
Drew

P.s. If you missed it, I launched 2 free tools last week (AI Sanity Check & AI Impact Analyzer) to help leaders at mid-sized companies accelerate with AI this January based on 18 months of trial and error at StealthX. Check them out and let me know what you think 😊