Hurtling Toward Change

Higher education feels like it’s moving on fast forward and the last year has been proof. We’re taking a moment to say thank you to everyone who’s watched, listened, subscribed, and helped grow The Rant Podcast across nearly 80 episodes, and then we pivot to what’s coming next as the education marketplace gets reshaped in real time.

Conference season is here, and whether you’re headed to the ASU GSV Summit, Ellucian Live, or any gathering in the higher ed universe, one topic keeps taking over every hallway conversation: AI in higher education. I talk through why artificial intelligence is showing up everywhere from student experience and institutional data strategy to day to day fears about what happens to jobs. We also dig into the real opportunity if we get this right: using AI to lower the cost of providing education, reach more learners, and create more personal learning experiences for working adults, military learners, and students balancing life and school.

I also share what we’re wrestling with in philanthropy and workforce development, and why state leaders are now treating AI and postsecondary attainment as economic strategy. A new report we’re publishing with Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce will spotlight the economic impact of not reaching more working learners in California and what that signal could mean for the rest of the country.

If you care about college access, affordability, economic mobility, and practical ways technology can strengthen learning across a lifetime, hit play. Subscribe, share the show with a colleague, and leave a review so more people can find these conversations.

eloy@4leggedmedia.com

Transcript

Welcome Back And Big Thanks

0:10

Hi, this is Eloy Ortiz Oakley, and welcome back to The Rant 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 wanna take just a little bit of time to say thank you to all of you. Our listeners are watchers on YouTube subscribers and people who have engaged with The Rant podcast. Over the last four years, we're now on episode 12 of season four. We have nearly 80 episodes under our belt. Uh, more than 400,000 views on YouTube, more than 10,000 downloads of our audio podcasts. And it's all thanks to all of you. When I started this journey, it was just an opportunity for me to talk to old friends, get into issues that I care about, and to just have a chance to rent. that's certainly fun for me and hopefully it's been fun for you. We've had a lot of great guests. Our most recent guest, Laura Ipsen, CEO of Ellucian, a company that's growing by leaps and bounds and leveraging AI To help their clients leverage better data and AI to improve the user experience, as well as Margaret Spellings the eighth US Secretary of Education, who now leads a bipartisan policy center. We will continue to have great guests because of all of you and because of our sponsors. Sponsors like Ellucian or Arizona State University. Rise point re-up education strategy group as well as college futures and open classrooms. So thank you to all of you, our sponsors for Making The Rant podcast possible. Now, we're sitting here today, it's early April, 2026, and there is so much going on. I myself, getting ready to head down to the A-S-U-G-S-V summit. I hope many of you will be joining me there. It's gonna be another great summit. Lots to look at, lots to hear about. Always a great show down in San Diego, but always an overwhelming show down in San Diego because there is so much going on. I think back to just. One year ago and looking at the higher education marketplace, so much has changed in just one year. From the changes that the Trump administration has promulgated, the chaos that has engulfed the world, sadly, and the changes that AI is bringing, you cannot be in a conversation today, whether at the A-S-U-G-S-V summit. Or at Ellucian Live, it's coming up in Denver, Colorado, or any conference in the higher education universe. Without talking about the influence of ai, the changes that AI is bringing and the concerns that comes with it. Whether you're concerned as a person working in the higher education marketplace, what this is gonna mean to your job. In my day job at College Futures, we've had this conversation about how is philanthropy going to leverage ai and what does it mean? Philanthropy, what does it mean to the organization, to college futures? And I know so many of you're wrestling with that. And we will continue to have great guests, guests like Lev Gonick, Jamie Smith, others who will bring a perspective on what AI means on the ground in the higher education marketplace, and how we can leverage it for good, how we can leverage it to lower the cost of providing education, how we can leverage it to reach more learners. and how we can leverage AI to create a more personal experience to every type of learner, regardless of their background, their learning styles, where they're learning, whether at home abroad, whether they're in the military, stationed somewhere abroad or right here in their own home. AI will help us leverage lots of other ways of thinking about the organization. I know here in California and in every state in the country, state capitals, governors are thinking about how to leverage AI to reach more learners in their states. we here in California, we will be publishing a report soon. in which college Futures partnered with Georgetown University Center on Education and Workforce that will show the economic impact to a state like California, the fourth largest economy on the globe, the impact of not reaching more learners, particularly working learners, and what that means to the California economy. I look forward to bringing that to you in a future episode. And bringing the team from CEW over at Georgetown to join me here on The Rant Podcast. I think you'll find it fascinating just how big of an impact it will make on California. And if it makes that big of an impact in California, think about the impact it'll make across the country. We're sitting here in a time of tremendous global chaos. Chaos within our own borders, a lot of uncertainty. And a lot of challenges with economic mobility, with affordability. Certainly that's true in a state like mine here in California, and the ways in which we are gonna help more people reach the California dream or the American dream, is through the opportunity to gain access to a good post-secondary experience. Not just a one-time experience, but an experience that extends throughout their entire working life. And be able to harness the power of technology to allow and empower these learners, these workers, to thrive in this economy, to support families, to grow communities, and to help us as a country become more resilient in these chaotic times. So I hope that you continue to join us. I hope to see many of you down at A-S-U-G-S-V. Please take the time to say hello as you're walking by the sea of people down in San Diego and continue to follow us here on The Rant Podcast, whether on YouTube or on your favorite audio podcast platform. We really appreciate the engagement. Please let us know about more great guests that we should bring on. I'm looking forward to the great guests that we're gonna have in the future. I mentioned the folks from Georgetown, CEW. We've got lots of other great guests already lined up. I'm looking forward to seeing my old friends like Ann Crest, the president of Northern Virginia Community College and many others here on The Rant Podcast. So thank you for making this a success thus far. I hope that we can continue to. bring you content that's worthwhile to you, that helps you learn about what's going on in the education marketplace and helps you think differently about the problems that we're trying to solve. So once again, thanks for joining us here on the RAM Podcast and we will see you again here shortly.