Leveraging AI & Data with Laura Ipsen

Eloy Ortiz Oakley hosts The Rant podcast and welcomes back Laura Ipsen, CEO of Ellucian, to discuss how higher education is navigating intensified pressures around accountability, affordability, enrollment, staffing constraints, and workforce alignment. Ipsen explains that better data transparency is essential to building trust and improving outcomes, and describes Ellucian’s work helping institutions modernize from on-prem to SaaS, clean and connect siloed data, and adopt AI and agentic capabilities to streamline workflows and support decision-making while keeping humans central. She highlights rising AI adoption across higher education, new governance efforts, and Ellucian’s platform direction, including Ellucian Student, skills-to-jobs tools, and a partnership bringing Ariana Huffington’s Thrive wellbeing resources into the student experience. They also preview priorities for the upcoming Ellucian Live event and Ipsen’s vision for broader modernization over the next 3–5 years.

www.ellucian.com

eloy@4leggedmedia.com

Transcript

0:09

Hi, this is Eloy Ortiz Oakley. Welcome back to the RAN podcast. The podcast where we pull back the curtain and break down the people, the policies, and the politics of our higher education system. In this episode, I get to welcome back Laura Ipsen, CEO of Ellucian. Laura joined us about, oh, nearly two years ago at, the A-S-U-G-S-V Summit. And while a lot was going on two years ago, it compares nothing to what's going on today. A lot has changed over the last two years, and so has Ellucian. So Laura will talk to me about the things that have changed, what her clients are telling her about their needs today. How Ellucian is leveraging generative AI and agent AI to help their clients, colleges and universities across this country leverage the data they have to better serve students And the time couldn't be more important than right now to talk about data, whether it's. The commission on the American workforce that I talked about in the last episode with Margaret Spellings or any of a number of other commissions or changes that are happening in states across the country. Everyone is talking about how to better leverage data to provide more and better information to colleges and universities and the learners themselves so that they can have more agency, and we as education leaders. Can provide a more personal experience to every kinda learner regardless of their background. We are living at a time when the need to increase the number of on-ramps to a good post-secondary experience is more important than ever. The economic impact, the loss of talent that we face is tremendous. And so college leaders throughout the country need to embrace this moment. Yes, as a moment of opportunity, but also as a moment of crisis. We can no longer stick our heads in the sand and pretend that this moment of chaos is going to go away and that all the pieces are gonna fall back into them place just like they were before this administration or before the pandemic. None of that is going to be realized. What's going to be realized is how leaders, true leaders in the education marketplace are going to lean into this moment, how they are going to leverage the technology that exists, because that technology is either going to help leaders grow and evolve their institutions or that technology is going to bury their institutions. Learners have more agency today than they have ever had. They are hungry to access skills and learning because they see on the ground that it is in their interest to continue to upskill and reskill. Those of us in higher education who have already gone through the education system, who may have benefited from the current education system, find it hard to understand the realities on the ground. But if you just look at the turmoil that's happening in communities throughout this country, the feeling that young people have 25 to 30 year olds who are having a really difficult time breaking into the job marketplace right now because they lack skills, because they don't have. Job experience, work experience, all those things are coming together right now and the need to better organize data, the need to lower the cost of operation is greater than ever today. So given all the things that are going on, I know Ellucians one of many vendor partners, their colleges and universities lean on. This gives us a chance to hear the story of one of those partners, Ellucian and their leader, Laura Ipsen. The CEO is here to talk about what's happening Ellucian, how they are evolving to meet the needs of today and into the future, and what that student experience could look like going forward. So with that backdrop, please join me in welcoming Laura Ipsen, the CEO of Ellucian. Laura, welcome back to the Rant podcast. Thanks, Eli. It's great. It's long overdue. Absolutely. It is long overdue. I think the last time we were on together on the podcast was almost two years ago, if you can believe that. Yes. Time flies and much has happened with both of us in the market. I suppose time flies when you're having fun or something like that, but, uh, but how have you been, uh, what's been going on in, in your world? I just noticed, I, I read recently that you are a 2026 CNBC Changemaker, so congratulations. Oh, well thanks. I mean, it's exciting because we are all about driving change and supporting our amazing customers in higher ed, but it's really. It's quite an honor to the company because we wanna create the change that's needed and do that in partnership with higher education. So it's really just a wonderful testament to all of Ellucian and my amazing employees. Well, absolutely, and it's a testament to the amazing work you've been leading. So congratulations to you personally. Thanks. Thanks. I appreciate it. Now, Laura? A lot has been going on in the world the last, year and a half to two years since we last talked. You know, the administration is putting a lot of pressure on higher education, upending, the traditional ways that, uh, that higher education works. Challenging a lot of notions in higher education and really keeping higher education leaders on their toes to say the least that we have. The challenges, with the public's erosion and the confidence in higher education that we've been documenting over the last couple of years. And of course, ai, AI is dominating the conversation in every higher education, place of work in every conversation that leaders are having. So how have you and your team. Been dealing with all the changes and, what's, uh, what's keeping you up at night? There's lots that keeps me up at night, but here's what I would say. It's a time of real intensity. A time of change, a time of struggle. But also a time of opportunity. And when I think of things like AI that should be able to scale the change, to support the change for one thing, for better outcomes, and what we focus on as the technology partner for more of higher ed than anyone else in the market. How do we create the best partnerships to help higher education with their priorities, with the things that they're struggling with? Obviously we see in enrollment pressures affordability, right? Staffing constraints, uh, demand around workforce alignment, which has been like the holy grail. How do we make sure to educate skills to jobs? We have AI solutions around that. So we look at this as a outcomes. I think there are good things that are happening. Around the policy landscape of driving outcomes, focusing on workforce, and they're challenging things too. And so our goal is to really partner with our customers and amazing leaders in higher education, the influencers like you, Eloi to see what can we do to help on the outcomes and create an infrastructure for the future. Not build on one from the past. So AI is a huge part of that. And AI first powered infrastructure is really what we've been designing. What I focused on in the eight years that I've been at Ellucian, I can't even believe it's eight years. But the billion dollar investment has been leading up to this moment in time. So real excited. We're very busy. I'm traveling just about every week and I am, I'm just back from the uk. I was out in California. I missed you. But, uh, a lot going on and we are super mobilized and incredibly busy. I bet you're busy. And I know the last time we had a, a chance to chat, I think it was at A-S-U-G-S-V and we were talking on the sidelines about How accountability is becoming more and more of an issue. Well, fast forward to today, Every state now building data systems to clearly show what kind of ROI programs of study are showing. And certainly here in, in my state my organization has been doing a lot of work to build a more transparent marketplace so that the learners actually understand. What they're getting into, where that program of learning is going in terms of their economic future. How are you and, and your the Ellucian clients that you have all across the country thinking about this challenge and how are you supporting their needs? Yeah, well, you said something really powerful because it is all about the data and mm-hmm. We believe in transparency, building trust across the education system with students that they trust that the pathway they're on are gonna lead to a brighter future. So the challenge with data is it doesn't matter what industry you're in. Most private companies, governments, higher education would say the state of my data is a bit of a question mark, and the one thing that we know that's so powerful is AI can really democratize data, open it up for access in the right ways with ethical use, but we've gotta understand where our data is, how it's siloed, how it'll be used. We gotta do some spring cleaning coming up on the data to get in shape to ready to go. That's what we're focused on as we work with our customers to modernize, to move from on-prem to SaaS, you really can't power up the future without AI and agentic and without making sure that your data is in good shape. Uh, that is job number one. So supporting our customers, all these institutions to do that, that's where I see the most opportunity. But it's stressful. Who has access? How are they gonna mobilize that? Making sure that there's accountability. But that to me is the most important thing. Where there is accountability, especially with taxpayer dollars on outcomes. It's incredibly powerful. And there are states and community college systems like North Carolina and leaders like Tomney, the chair of the board really focused on that accountability and driving for results and making that very public from the college system to the university system with Peter Hans, is that accountability of the data? It's very important to make sure that we get buy-in on funding and that we drive those outcomes for students. Well, it's crazy as, as things have been at the federal and at the state level, the one good thing that's coming out of this is this push for accountability and this notion that we have to have better data and that. Learners need better information. So, making sure that the data is clean. Certainly my previous experience when I was at an institution, uh, we always dealt with that challenge, garbage in, garbage out. how does Ellucian support colleges, universities improve The quality of the data, particularly now since it's so important in this AI age, uh, especially given the challenges that a lot of colleges and universities have in terms of hiring more capacity. As we're moving dozens and now we'll go into hundreds of customers moving to SaaS, that's part of the hygiene is we build or navigate to SaaS, is that we look at that. We do the, the consultative work. We work with the leaders across an institution, not just the CIOs, but the business stakeholders to really understand how their, their workflows move today and what that looks like in the future. And AI and Agentic will help speed that up. We'll take the burden out of it. So using AI and agentic to understand the workflows, where the data is, where the silos are how to move that to a modern infrastructure. That's part of the work that we've done to move many, many of our customers to our SaaS platform. It's powered by Banner and colleague, but we've now are launching something called Ellucian Student, which is the future platform of fully integrated. Open, extensible and secure platform that brings in new capabilities, whether they're ellucians or third parties. And so that is the ultimate, all the data across the institution through every system needs to be opened up for the institution to make those decisions, to manage it the right way. responsible use with controls and security. And that really is the future. That is the pathway, to build this next generation of higher education opportunities for institutions and to power those learners forward.'cause they're making choices and they're very different, right? They were in the past 10 years. The next two years are gonna be dramatically different. And AI newgen is where we see it all going. It's going to be dramatically different for sure. Laura, and first of all, I can't, I can't help but also say, you gave a, a shout out to Tom Looney. he's a great guy. They're doing great work in North Carolina. That's certainly one of the states I'm paying attention to these days. Yeah. Uh, particularly with the great community colleges they have there and the work that they're doing to empower the institutions and empower the community there Now. I recently visited your website just ahead of the podcast, and I can't help but notice all of the, the tech that shows up on your website from, uh, images of students wearing VR gear to all the talk about, uh, ai. You touched on it a little bit, but, um, how is Ellucian leveraging generative AI and other technologies to improve the user experience and to help colleges and universities support their learners? Well, first of all, I'm really proud. It's not about the website, but the ability to articulate what is modern. Mm-hmm. What we've already been doing in new ways and making it very interactive and showcasing that future. So I hope everyone goes to ellucian.com to check it out. That's right. But maybe first let's step back.'cause one thing that we see in the use of AI Ingen is that we're at this inflection point. with everything happening. Everyone knows we need to be, have smarter systems and make those improvements now. And the one thing that we see and, and that we'll be looking at what is actually happening is we we're just about to release our AI survey report for the third year. and everyone that you see across the ecosystem, not just students, staff and now administration, but also the trustees. Are working to make sure that there's a more modern, intuitive, responsive way of working. And the highlights that we had is that it's really table stakes Now. 90% of higher education are using ai. personal adoption is up from 84% last year. The institutional AI adoption jumped from 66%, from 49%. Just signaling, just more adoption. But it's not just adoption, it's adoption leading to outcomes. So now we've been building to produce those outcomes and, you know, I would say close to 50% are gonna put this in their strategic plans. That's what I see year over year. That's just been such a game changer, is that you will see across higher education chief AI officer, new AI committees. There are governance issues that are really important. The leaders set the tone and the, the strategy on AI is coming from the presidents, the chancellors, and the trustees. So just stepping back, knowing that there's the momentum and that the only way to embrace AI and agent is to have a modern infrastructure. We've been focused to making sure that everything that we do with AI and agentic builds outcomes. That it's not just a feature, it's really the foundation of the next generation of higher ed. So as we've built this, it's, it's all about not just chat bots, but agents that are actually helping you build those workflows of the future. Helping you with our new AI writing tool to produce the communications, to save time, because all of us are burdened with more work. Not enough time. So it's streamlining business process across the platform. It's launching new capabilities for students. We have something called Smart Planet Award that's like a GPS for students. We have been building in response to where the, where Washington is going on workforce. How do we support short term Pell? We have Ellucian journey that uses AI to build the ontology for skills to jobs, connecting to real time data. So. Everything comes back to the ability to power up the data, to use AI to be more intelligent, to create these, modern dashboards that not are static, but help you actually make decision. And the ultimate is as you build a agentic and those agents, they're gonna be working with each other. This is a really critical time of are you gonna use agents to just decide who you're gonna. And, uh, recruit and enroll. Are you gonna use just agents to advise your students? No, I think what we'll see early is the agent is actually helping you to do your job faster, to make, to create better outcomes, and it, and to give you more time to be human. So if advisors can use these powerful tools to help chart the future for a student, it's not a linear path. It's zigzag, it's, it's a circle. Mm-hmm. Right. If they're helpful. Then it really means that we can be more human with these capabilities. We can scale faster, we can simplify and we can meet the future demands of students because lifelong learning is really what's old is new again. We've been learning forever but it's more critical is a billion jobs that need to be re-skilled in 2030. So. That's what I'm most excited about. I think that's what we have to focus on, is making sure that we don't use the human element, but that agentic and agents today and what we built is really to amplify, and that's what we built across Ellucian student the AI capabilities way beyond chatbots to simplifying workflows, to creating these modern opportunities for lifelong learning. Well, you mentioned two things that stuck in my mind. First of all on your last comment, this notion of lifelong learning, a lifelong learning. I think for many people it, it feels like it, it's been a luxury, you know, a, an opportunity to just to continue to learn a few things. Really, it's become a necessity. A necessity for every worker. Every person in the workforce needs access to skills, to continuously upskill and to reskill, particularly as AI begins to change the way organizations work together. I mean, you mentioned agents working with other agents. I think that comment alone would, um, freak a few people out in the workforce, but the reality is that's happening today. Happening Now that's happening and it, it feels scary, but it's already happening in six to 12 months, I think we'll get more comfortable with it. Right. But the, you know, the institutions, whether, I know you interviewed Lev ick from asu. Mm-hmm. I was just talking to Jeff Rubin at Syracuse University. The way that they're governing this, that they're powering the future is really compelling from embracing it from operational efficiency. To helping make better decisions. Right? And the ones that will do it the best are going to create more of these opportunities across the institution. Not leaving it as a tech thing to do, but with faculty, with administration, um, showcasing this, how does the institution become more responsive and dynamic so that as more students come back, your alums and others, the community to learn? These institutions will be ready and agents will find them. Agents will actually find your alums. They will suggest, Hey, we see that you need to re-skill. We know the job you're in. We open up the aperture of the jobs of the future. So these agents are gonna be our best friends for lifelong learning because they're gonna get the opportunities in front of us at the time we need it. And they're gonna also help find the funding, whether it's with scholarships and grants, uh, whether it's helping a whole system with, with cross registration to transfer. All of this comes together in powerful ways, which is why we've embedded AI in the platform for a modern infrastructure. And that's what I'm excited about, to build this future that will scale and that economically is gonna be more viable for any size of institution, public, private, wherever you go. So you mentioned Lev over at a SU institutions like a SU or Jamie Smith over at the University of Phoenix, or any of a number of other places. WGU, university of Massachusetts Global. These are institutions that have already launched forward and embraced AI as part of their, their model as part of the way that they serve students. A lot of other institutions are sort of in the middle of the pack trying to figure this all out. So given that you've already been a trusted partner across the country, you know, working with institutions, you know, the challenges that institutions face, uh, how does Ellucian help these sort of middle of the pack institutions adjust to some of the new technologies that are coming in and. I would imagine they're also getting bombarded by vendors who are selling them a solution to problems they may not even have. Yeah. How do you help them sort of wrestle with all that? What we do is, first of all, we have the platform and we serve 50% of the market today in the US mm-hmm. And 50 countries globally. So we see everything. Our goal is to share that, share the best practices, build that community. That's what we're doing as you know, at Ellucian Live, is bringing the community together. Uh, it it's about the community coming together and showing the capabilities that they're building, sharing with others. Supporting others to grow and to make the changes and to build that future. So as we build the platform, we're making sure that we understand the financial pressures the needs for capabilities, and we're, we're using our solutions, whether it's in recruiting and advising and lifelong learning. Everything that we do to build the ROI model, how do we make it more efficient, more effective, produce better results? We're all about optimizing those business workflows, bringing all the data to the surface, and producing the better outcomes. So that's what we show. That's what the institutions we serve are showcasing at Ellucian Live Modern solutions across a modern platform now powered by ai. And looking at agents of the future to make things happen faster, to make sure that if there's a student at risk, that you catch them all the data is there. We just haven't put it into a capability that right ends up in results. So we focus on certainly the academic side of a student wellbeing. We focus on their financial wellbeing with our student financial success models. Then we're also, we just, um, finished our partnership with Ariana Huffington. She has an amazing platform called Thrive. Thrive is helping with anxiety. Depression, wellbeing and sleep. Everything that you can imagine. And we're really excited because Thrive will show up as a card on Ellucian student, our platform. So it will help students get through a tough time. They have an anxious moment after exam, they're having a panic attack. They know that they need to take care of their physical wellbeing. It's everything from diet, from meditation. To, um, mental health in, in the right ways to find moments of peace. So I think for us, it's really exciting to see all the data coming together in the right ways with the right access to support students no matter where they are. A single mother stressed out, a lifelong learner in their seventies that once know there's a path for me to create a new opportunity in my life. I think that's the power of a platform that uses AI agentic, is that you have all the information now in a way that you can mobilize quickly to get the outcomes that you need to make sure that institutions for the future are successful. Because those who are not ready to change, I'm afraid they're gonna be left behind Eloy. They are definitely gonna be left behind. And you see some of that happening already. You do. It's called consolidation and um, right. Tough financial time. So we're just working to, it's tough models for everyone to see those best practices because it's not a competition, it's an opportunity to create the future and, and I see just great leaders making a difference and sharing that with others. Happy to hear about your, uh, partnership with, Ariana Huffington. Uh, yeah, she's amazing. I may have to, she's amazing. Amazing. I may have to access, the Thrive App because every time I turn on the news, I get an anxiety time. It's been, it is been a tough weekend for sure. But you know what? she has done tremendous things with higher education, and I'm gonna connect the two of you to get her on the podcast too. That would be great. Absolutely. So Laura, let me ask you this. we are going to be on the heels of your Ellucian Live event When this podcast is published. Uh, a lot has changed over the years. Ellucian Live or Eli as you call it. Really highlights all the work that you've been doing, the technology that's out there brings together a community of individuals who are working toward this the same goal. What are you looking forward to, uh, with Eli this year and, and what's changed? I'm just looking forward to it'cause it's, we're less than 60 days away, but just being there with the vibrancy and the excitement that all of these leaders in higher education bring the user community, the sharing, just the ecosystem, I think people just get inspired and I really get inspired for one to show. The capabilities that we've built, uh, listening and learning from our customers to see how they're using'em and producing outcomes to have student ambassadors there. New this year is, there's gonna be a whole lineup of how we built AI and AG agentic and the building up of Ellucian student, which is the ultimate AI agentic. Platform for everything that Higher Ed's doing. We're bringing together our president advisory council. We have about 40. I think that would be a fun thing for you to participate in. We're bringing systems together. So you talked about Dan Greenstein, the former Chancellor of the Paci system. Uh mm-hmm. Before we started the interview Dan's joined us as the chief of Transformation. Joe. So Lucio, that's great. Who runs the Edit podcast. We'll lead the presidents. Dan's working with the systems to build the best practices and the models and to share. As systems are really looking to how do we power the future across an entire state? If you're a community college system, how do you tie that into the university? Make sure that students understand how to transfer. And doing that with new insights, really powered by ai. So that is very new for us, is bringing these communities together. certainly, you know, it's always fun to have great, uh, uh, VIPs. We've got Pete Manning there, so that will be a lot of fun. But then new influencers, and we need your voice there too, Eloy. So lots of new things that we're gonna share. I'm not gonna be a spoiler on everything, right, but you're gonna see incredible new solutions, hands on keyboards and of, of course our amazing partners that are there to support the event. It's not just an event. It's a moment in time that I think we get together to celebrate. Innovations, but also to learn from each other. And the best thing that we do in higher education is, is learning. And it's the ultimate learning festival in higher education. So I wanna see everybody in Denver the 19th through the 22nd. Well, there you go. There you go. Everybody's gotta be in Denver, April. Let's make sure April. And we're hoping that that's right. You know, we won't have snowstorms by then, but they're a little bit behind in getting their snow versus the East Coast, so we'll see. All right. Well let me ask you one last question as we begin to wrap up, Laura. So given all the changes that are happening, and I'm sure you know when we last got together 18, 20 months ago, whatever it was, it was hard to imagine where we'd be here today. Where would you like to see, Ellucian, uh, over the next three to five years, given the rapid pace of change? What, what would you expect to see different in that timeframe? I expect that, by then, every one of our customers will be working in a modern way. And I'd love to say it's all SaaS. It is about SaaS, but it's way beyond that. It's modernizing to make sure that every student counts, that, as we look at unlocking learning for all. That higher education and Ellucian together has achieved the opportunity to power the future to make sure that that, you know, workers aren't left behind, that they develop the new skill sets. Students are inspired and passionate about their future versus they're afraid to graduate and. Figuring out where the jobs are, right? We'll know together, working in modern ways driven by AI agent that every human being has the opportunity to learn that there are pathways that are personalized for the individual, that we don't feel like technology is overcoming us, but technology is actually setting us in a direction. That is deeply meaningful for wherever you are, whatever age, background, financial status that we're together, we're powering that future. Working with policy makers in more, even more constructive ways and figuring that out together. And then, having an opportunity in a couple years to celebrate with you that we didn't leave many institutions behind. They did transform right. They're engaging more learners in new ways. It's not, it's a new traditional way that learners are going to access education and we've all gotta get on board with that and you know, let's go, let's power it up. Well, let's definitely power it up. And it's great advice to any higher education leader that is tuning into this podcast. I mean, the need to embrace technology, the need to embrace. More and better ways to reach learners, to support learners when they need the support is exactly where we need to be going. And fortunately we have teams like yours at Ellucian who are helping institutions figure this out. Provide'em the capacity that they need and provide'em some direction as to how to actually get this done. So Laura. Thank you for being on the podcast, and thank you for continuing your leadership in the higher education marketplace. Thank you, Eli. And let's make a promise we're not gonna wait almost two years again. Yes. To have this conversation. Absolutely. Well, thanks for joining us, everyone. I hope you've enjoyed my conversation with Laura Ipsen, CEO of Ellucian. And before we leave you, I wanna thank the entire Ellucian team for being a great supporter of the Rent Podcast. Without support from sponsors like Ellucian, we wouldn't be able to bring you great content and great guests like Laura Ipsen. So if you're watching us on YouTube, please hit subscribe. We really appreciate all of our subscribers. We have over 5,000 subscribers to the RAMP Podcast, and we wanna continue to build the community of leaders and learners and folks in the higher education marketplace that continue to engage with us here on the rant podcast. If you are listening to us on your favorite podcast. Audio platform, whether that be Apple Podcast or Spotify or whatever it might be. Subscribe, download our episodes and continue to engage with us here on the rant podcast. Thanks for joining us, everyone, and we will see you all soon.