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The Great Disjuncture in the Sky
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What was and wasn't prominently discussed at ASU+GSV 2025
In this conversation, Phil Hill, Neil Mosley, and Morgan discuss the recent ASU+GSV Summit and associated AI Show, reflecting on the overall experience, the quality of sessions, and the themes that emerged. They explore the disjunctures in higher education conversations, particularly regarding current challenges and the role of AI. The discussion also touches on the impact of financial turmoil, cultural wars, and the influence of Big Tech on education. The conversation concludes with thoughts on innovative solutions and the future direction of educational practices.
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Transcript
Introduction and ASU GSV Summit Overview
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome back to our special birthday edition of online education across the Atlantic. As I know most people are celebrating Neil's birthday. By the time this gets published, you'll have missed it by a day or two. But happy birthday, Neil, as you, I don't know what birthdays count for in these ages.
00:00:27
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it look, it's really great to be entering my 30s. I've been looking forward to that for a while. so i was about to ask if you were illegal to drink yet. If you guys can remember that, you know, period. That's a good one. There's a good one. and Yeah, well, that was during the the ah the Truman administration, so that was a while back.
00:00:50
Speaker
Well, you've got some Johnson ah electoral signs on your back wall, so you're set up for that. And for the record, no, I don't well remember anyway. Must have been a good decade then.
00:01:02
Speaker
It must have been a good decade. So it's ah great to see you. Morgan and I ah just got back from the ASU GSV Summit, and so we're going to take the opportunity today to sort of cover that.
00:01:15
Speaker
And there's another opportunity in the U.S. where we do have occasional news items going on. But for the past week and a half, it's all been about tariffs, which are not directly about education. So this gives us a chance to jump right into the ASU summit and and have that conversation. And I guess, allow Neil, allow you to virtually join the conference after the fact.
00:01:41
Speaker
Look, I mean, the question that everyone wants to know the answer to is, did you get a seat at the bar? I mean, this is the this is our question, right? that was a bit That was a headline of the conference. They had one ASU GSB, the first one after the pandemic, and there were so few people you could sit at the bar impromptu meetings.
00:01:59
Speaker
Other than that, this was the first one in maybe six or seven years where you could just wander in and get a seat at the bar. And it was wonderful.
00:02:10
Speaker
Did you go in there at all for any meetings, Morgan? Not after our meeting on Sunday. Yeah, but I count Sunday. Yeah, Sunday didn't quite count. Oh, jeepers. Okay. I don't but I'm just saying there were fewer people at the conference. But yes, in that right so that actually gets to an interesting point.
00:02:26
Speaker
Yes, you absolutely could find a seat at the bar. I went in to watch the basketball game on Monday night. So if you're thinking Final Four basketball game, conference, and you're able to actually get to the bar in the evening, that said something was different. And on one hand...
Conference Attendance and Security Measures
00:02:43
Speaker
They did a much better job this year of setting up extra tables and chairs everywhere to enable impromptu meetings because that's the real challenge. But I strongly suspect that there were a lot of no-shows as well, given the budget situations, particularly with the universities.
00:03:02
Speaker
Yeah, we know of at least one university which was going to come and everything, but decided not to. so Yeah, but just given the general crowding, I would not be surprised if – because they sent out an email ahead of time that said 8,000 people, record attendance coming up.
00:03:20
Speaker
There might have been that many people registered, but I strongly suspect there were 10, 20 percent no-shows because of the higher ed budget situation.
00:03:31
Speaker
So their loss was our gain. Although even though there were many more chairs and fewer people, I still have been walking around my house this morning just randomly sitting on a chair because it's available.
00:03:42
Speaker
Taking advantage of it. Did you put on your badge so that you felt like walking around? Yes, yes. I was actually um up at a meeting on the 32nd floor and somebody who we all know, um who in fact may have been responsible for us knowing each other, ah didn't have his badge on and and they were going to escort him out of the building.
00:04:05
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Actually, I did have one meeting where they kept the person locked out of the entire hotel. And so we had to have our meeting standing outside in the front courtyard.
00:04:18
Speaker
Um, But part of that was Secretary of Education Linda McMahon spoke at the Tuesday breakfast. This is couple days after the weekend protest, the hands-off protest, and they had decent sized crowd in San Diego. And there was going to be a protest during Secretary McMahon's talk.
00:04:38
Speaker
And so give ASU GSB credit. They've really hired a lot of extra security, even to the point I was out going for a walk, 645.
00:04:50
Speaker
They wouldn't let me back into the hotel unless I could show a key and prove that I was staying there. And then they were stationed by every door, by every elevator. they had security everywhere.
00:05:03
Speaker
Of course, the protest, because I was looking down on it from my room, I think there were about 20 people there. think that they did an excellent job of really making sure that none of that was going to cause a problem.
00:05:17
Speaker
So those were, see all the excitement that you missed, Neil?
Meeting Origins and Conference Critiques
00:05:21
Speaker
I know. I've had so many people in the past few weeks in the lead-up saying, are you going? You should really go. um So, you know, ah I've been quite grumpy about it because, you know, you don't want to be reminded that you're not going to something that you you want to go to. Yeah. And we should mention, Morgan mentioned... ah ah Key point, Rajay Nayak from ah Skilled Education. i don't know if you remember, Neil, but he's the one that introduced us ah several years ago. So basically, I called him the podcast godfather. He created this podcast.
00:05:54
Speaker
I don't know if you remember that. Do you know what? I do not remember that, but speaking to Rajay recently, and didn't come up. So I hadn't twigged on that. But yeah, there we go. Well, it It was ASUGSV. It actually sort of speaks to how some of these conferences work. I was meeting with him.
00:06:14
Speaker
um He was asking me, this is years ago, about if we're just US or not. And I said, no, we do market analysis, includes you know global, but in particular, Europe, Australia.
00:06:25
Speaker
And I was just talking to him, and he said, oh, you need to – do you know Neil Mosley? And he said, you you guys should definitely meet sometime. So that's when I reached out to you. We we credit him now as the godfather of this podcast.
00:06:41
Speaker
The pun father. yeah the Yeah. I know i hadn't appreciated the whole backstory, so that's good to know. But – You just expect people randomly reach out to you all the time. so Well, i I just thought you'd already know who I am, to be honest, Phil.
00:06:56
Speaker
So the it was interesting. So overall vibe, I mean, it was it was a good show. Yeah. The show has become the must-attend, at least for U.S.-based analysts, vendors, and leaders in the higher education space.
00:07:14
Speaker
And it remains that. ah But there are some signs you have to watch out for. And the actual quality of the sessions this year um was not what I didn't have very many where I said, oh, that session was great.
00:07:29
Speaker
I had far, far fewer this year. Yeah. was that Was that due to the the themes? What would you attribute that to? I mean, be polite. That's a loaded question. Morgan, why don't you start off with some of your observations? One thing is that there are many more corporate sessions.
00:07:50
Speaker
And so, you know, some of those obviously were popular, like there was a long line to get into one of the Google sessions. um always so that I didn't even make it into there. But that that that sort of dominated the program. And I think it it was a bit much.
00:08:05
Speaker
The conference for me was a a story of disjunctures. Like there were there were there were things going on that people weren't talking about. and I think that contributed to some of the some of the fact that the the sessions weren't quite what I wanted them to be. you know Things seem to be operating at a level of superficiality in a way without getting into some real nitty gritty, which is something that I've really enjoyed in the past at ASU GSV. You really learn some good details and some you know some ugly details often, which is really useful.
00:08:40
Speaker
We need examples. Yeah. What was it that was not not spoken about? out That was my question. Oh, okay. so So there were two disjuncts for me. One, nobody was talking about the current situation in the US in higher education and how we were going to think about it. There were some sessions where that was discussed.
00:08:55
Speaker
So Phil had a session that was actually, like I swear, there was many people outside the door trying to get in as people inside. um So yeah people were sitting on the floor and hanging by the light fixtures and and everything. um There was another one by the Chronicle where they just said, okay, we're going to talk about this. We're not going to talk about this. We're going to talk about what's going on right now.
00:09:15
Speaker
And you know obviously, Linda McMahon was there and Glenn Youngkin, the the governor of Virginia and things. But in the main sessions, nobody talked about it. And I'm i'm all for compartmentalization and denial. But like at a certain point, we need to to actually do it.
00:09:31
Speaker
The other issue was also AI. I mean, AI was all over the the the schedule, but all the conversations about AI seemed to be very superficial to me. Nobody was sort of really getting into the nitty gritty of it. and You could find the nitty gritty of it along the sides. and and you know I kind came across a couple of vendors or you know was reminded of a couple of vendors that are doing great things and had some great conversations, but the sessions themselves all about, oh, we need to prepare our students, we need literacy, we need ethics, and never sort of got beyond that very superficial level.
00:10:02
Speaker
All right. So now that we've got the Reader's Digest version, we're going to need to dive into that, both of those, a little bit deeper because I think they're great observations. um And on the first one,
00:10:13
Speaker
The disjuncture, um that wasn't the word you used in San Diego. I think ah you're making yourself sound much nicer right now. But um I think there was denial. ah There were so a few other terms that I heard that may or may not have come from you.
00:10:29
Speaker
But ah so what we covered on the podcast where I i sort of covered what I had presented in D.C., What happened was that DC conference about what to expect next on the Trump administration, how to understand it, and some crucial things that are so obvious but are not being dealt with, such as expect step two.
00:10:52
Speaker
Trump is a dealmaker. That's what he does. Elon Musk cuts too far and then pulls back. So expect step two. Just that type of thing and other things I covered.
00:11:04
Speaker
um I did an abbreviated version of that at the conference, along with John Katzman with Noodle. It was his sponsored session. And that's the one that Morgan was talking about. a Other than the rafters, you weren't really exaggerating.
00:11:21
Speaker
the I'm glad the fire marshal wasn't there because there were people pushing past and sitting around the side. It was more than standing room. And they told me there were about 50 people they blocked out of coming in.
00:11:36
Speaker
The most amusing story is we had seen Brian Napak, who's chairman of the board, executive chairman for 2U, and he was planning on coming to the session, which was sponsored and run by Noodle.
00:11:48
Speaker
Well, Brian Napak was one of the people that they that he they wouldn't let him in. So i I found some amusement in that. And it was a great conversation, tremendous interest. I mean, there's like there's a hunger to talk about these real issues. That's what I attribute this to. And that's what our our session was about. It allowed people to say, well, what about this? And what should we – it wasn't like organizing what should we do, but help us understand But the reason I mentioned that gets to Morgan's point.
Panel Discussions and Current Events
00:12:21
Speaker
I think there is a really strong desire to deal with the nitty gritty, the dirty, what situation are we in? And
00:12:30
Speaker
You just didn't see it throughout the conference. And then Morgan and I were talking, keep sharing our conversations. I said, well, you gotta be fair that the pam all the sessions were defined before the ignore the inauguration. So they just didn't have time to put them in. But your point was, I'll let you make your point again.
00:12:50
Speaker
And so one, a lot of the sessions are panels, which which you can be really nice, but it also gives them the freedom to actually extemporize a little bit. So, you know, um they They could have actually updated it because now it's it's now, you know, April. So we we we know some of the contours of that.
00:13:09
Speaker
um and you know, there's not many issues where the current events don't have an impact. You know, so, for example, student success or online learning or or things like that.
00:13:19
Speaker
how How is the situation going to change now because of things? Because universities are cutting back. um ah in terms of budget, you know, there are new rules and and and and so on. So, you know, even though the the schedule was set, you know, there there was an opportunity or or you could have done what the Chronicle did and say, we're going to talk about this.
00:13:39
Speaker
Here, come talk to us later if you still want to know, but we're going to talk about this other thing because it's more it's more critical. So I think there yeah there was some ah some opportunity to to actually make something really relevant instead of,
00:13:53
Speaker
You know, often I was sitting in sessions not hearing anything new because, like, the denial was so strong. I'm interested, Phil, you know, because you're obviously, your session was kind of about trying to navigate and understand, you know, what's happening and what might happen in the future. I'm just interested to to understand whether Linda McMahon's session ah did more added more light and ah detail too to that or changed the way that you thought about something? or for i'll Let me answer and let Morgan answer. We'll have different answers, I suspect. from my Well, first of all, couldn't get into the session to see Linda McMahon.
00:14:29
Speaker
And I'll compliment ASU GSB again, another improvement. There were so many people in the main session. They did ah live streaming this year. That wasn't just live streaming. You could go to YouTube and you could even back up and see what you missed.
00:14:44
Speaker
And when I realized the line was too long and I knew the audio where they were simulcasting it down the hall was pretty poor. I went up to my room and watched it. So I'm giving ASU GSV credit that they really did a lot to take to address some of the problems of the past. Things are too big.
00:15:01
Speaker
Having said that, um there was a good interview. Whoever the woman doing the interview was, I give her a lot of credit that she did ask some tough questions. I don't think she did any follow-up questions, which I wish she had done, like say, hey, you didn't answer this.
00:15:18
Speaker
right, with that whole setup, ah nothing the own no nothing was new that she said. I think she is a very natural speaker and seems very, um like she's not just going to talking points. Of course she had her talking points, but she really addressed the questions and she articulated the vision that very closely aligned with what I've been hearing in backroom discussions.
00:15:46
Speaker
So that wasn't new, it was refreshing to hear it straight from her mouth. um And let me give my biggest criticism. There were a couple things such as the first question was about, you talk about distributing decision-making to the states. Well, how what happens with states that don't prioritize access and using Title I funds to meet certain student needs?
00:16:13
Speaker
Linda McMahon answered that in terms of local. They know better how to run things than bureaucrats in DC. I get that point. But that wasn't the question. I was wishing the interviewer would have said, right, thanks for that answer. Now will you answer my question? That's what I would have done.
00:16:29
Speaker
um Anything new, the only thing new, she was very direct where so they asked about the IES cuts, the part of the Department of Ed that does the data collection.
00:16:41
Speaker
And and but it's a Linda McMahon talked about that and very specifically talked about NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress. which is the most high profile in the K-12 area. And she once again committed, no, we're doing this.
00:16:58
Speaker
But she also talked about, but we need to make changes. So right now we do it every other year at grades four and eight. Maybe there's a different approach. We need to change it.
00:17:10
Speaker
So she put herself very much on the record that we will keep doing this. She specifically addressed the changes and even gave some hints on what they might be.
00:17:23
Speaker
But she also acknowledged we don't know the details yet. That to me is important because that's what we should be tracking. It's not just did you have layoffs. It's like, OK, are you meeting what you're supposed to do?
00:17:35
Speaker
So if they don't put it out on time, you can go back to this. So to me, that's. If there's anything that changed, it's just more elaboration on the cuts to the data group and on record her being very clear about we're not cutting this.
00:17:54
Speaker
So nothing changed. I guess I just is I'm listening to myself answer you. And I guess my answer is no, it was good to hear. But no, nothing changed. Morgan. No, no. You know, I think it's it's sort of like in in some ways sort of, I mean, it felt like trying to calm some of the storm in a way, you know, like, oh, it's going to be fine. It's going to be fine as opposed to fle fanning the flames a bit. So, know, but nothing substantially changed. Yeah.
00:18:26
Speaker
I'm also interested as well, you know, I guess this is this kind of context of um government kind of decision making and policy creating turmoil in higher education.
Financial Impacts on Edtech and Universities
00:18:35
Speaker
But I'm just interested sit interested in the nature of the discussion around the turmoil that's created in the financial markets and how that relates to investors, to edtech and that kind of ecosystem and whether that came through much at the conference. No, that was that was part of that disjuncture. Like, there wasn't enough of that. Like, we needed to really talk about that. Well, you heard it in the hallways. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:19:00
Speaker
that was But also, people haven't had time on the markets. Keep in mind, that was a week old, and people hadn't had time to digest it. But that wasn't talked about in the sessions at all.
00:19:12
Speaker
Actual budget cuts and anti-DEI. Hey, I brought up DEI and the anti-Semitism. I don't know. ah The Chronicle, I'm guessing they did over in that session. but Not really. I don't remember that.
00:19:26
Speaker
Oh, okay. Well, there's a, I just can't stress enough, there's a hunger to actually deal with this on a productive level, and it just wasn't there. So I guess the answer to your question is, no, that, that, the financial market implications wasn't discussed one bit in the sessions.
00:19:44
Speaker
I mean, I guess it's interesting, isn't it? Because ah even from this side of the pond, you know, it's just fatiguing, the the sheer extent of what's happening and the speed in which it's happening and the consequences and the unintended consequences and the uncertainty that, you know, it it's very challenging, isn't it, to to navigate all of that and to think about And I find myself increasingly...
00:20:12
Speaker
always interested, but increasingly just cognitively fatigued by just everything.
Mental Fatigue and Educational Policy Challenges
00:20:19
Speaker
And I'm assuming that other people feel the same as well.
00:20:23
Speaker
That's part of the strategy. No, it yeah really is. There's a shock and awe nature of what's happening right now. And this gets to the other point that we talked on the pod. Well, it gets to the step two in the negotiating style.
00:20:38
Speaker
The intent is, and I honestly don't, I don't view this necessarily as a negative. I think it's power negotiation. For me, it's like, damn it, we should recognize it.
00:20:49
Speaker
But people not just react to the news of the day, but that's the point is to get everybody reacting, getting fatigued. And then it's not behind the scenes, but the more important stuff people aren't focusing on partially because they're too fatigued. But I guess my...
00:21:06
Speaker
Yes, that's an issue, but we need to recognize that's part of the negotiating style. That's not just random. Yeah, and it feels to me, I don't know, maybe maybe this is um maybe this is unfair, but it feels to me that when I think about universities over here, I think they're less...
00:21:25
Speaker
They're less anchored as institutions. They're more likely to be blown off track by whole range of things that's happening externally or to be a bit more brittle around that kind of thing than saying, this is what we're about, this is what we're doing, this is our strategy, this is how we're gonna go forward. And obviously the things that we're talking about are major things, but I think as a sector, um I would wonder how kind of rooted sometimes universities are when things external to them blow up um So it it feels like there's a particular um yeah particular challenge because of you know generalizing, but that feels to be the nature of things.
00:22:05
Speaker
I'll throw in just a simplistic additional note that I haven't fully thought through, but just to react to that. to The more elite the school is in the U.S., the more selective their admissions is, the greater that is an impact right now.
00:22:25
Speaker
It is the elites that are here hair on fire, missing the mission, not thinking about what is our mission, but simply reacting But you have to be fair there's a lot of community colleges. There's a lot of mostly online schools, some some regional publics, not all who actually i do think are um focusing on mission, not overreacting, per se trying to figure out what do we need to do?
00:22:56
Speaker
But it's almost. The more rational you are, it's almost the more underground that conversation. It's like I'm hearing that in hallway conversations, in private meetings. So there's sort of a correlation with how elite you are.
00:23:12
Speaker
Yeah, no I think it's definitely, you know, because a big part of it right now is the double whammy of of funding cuts, you know, through through grant funding and and things. And then um just, you know, federal cuts, which are being aimed directly at more elite institutions.
00:23:31
Speaker
um and and and And so they certainly are are feeling the brunt of that right now. So the others are are sort of more in a wait-and-see kind of mode. But, um you know, I think the the the economy will will will start to affect them sort of as well. So, you know, it's just a matter of time before they they they they start. But they are sort of taking more of a wait-and-see rather than the...
00:23:57
Speaker
you know And then you know on top of that, you've got the fact that not everybody on the campus is marching so to the same tune. you know Like a lot of them are facing yeah faculty anger as well. you know So you've got this sort of like internal and external conflict and and and and crisis to deal with.
00:24:17
Speaker
i'm I'm interested as well, just just to come back to some of those things, that I i get the kind of culture war element of of this. And and i like I think in our previous government, we had that relative to universities. But one of the other kind of narratives that was kind of more on the kind of anti-higher education side of things was how well they serve the economy and how well they, um you know, being bring students through, we're going to help the workforce. And our previous government had a big push around kind of apprenticeships and of a technical kind of qualifications. that I guess I'm not, I'm just interested in whether part of the narrative that's challenging universities, if I can put it like that, is also to do with that and whether the government's exploring alternatives or pushing alternatives or
00:25:02
Speaker
Well, the interesting thing is, this is, right, in a functional country, there's a real opportunity right now.
Economic Value of Universities and Future Challenges
00:25:09
Speaker
Both sides have that perspective. Both sides are concerned about the value that universities are providing.
00:25:17
Speaker
In my opinion, there's too much emphasis on workforce and economic outcomes, but that's a separate subject. um So there's actually mutual agreement on the question that you asked about, and we need to deal with it.
00:25:34
Speaker
But we're in a moment right now where due well due to multiple things, cultural war the Trump administration methods and stuff like that. People are protesting against the thing.
00:25:47
Speaker
the They agree on the problem, but they won't even talk about the solution. You're evil for even thinking about that solution. So I think there's agreement on the value of education and it needs to be improved. Of course, there's some status quo providers saying there's nothing to see. We're fine.
00:26:04
Speaker
But the conferences I go to and the conferences, crowds that I talk to on both sides are saying the same thing on the problem, but we're not in a healthy space of, okay, what do you do? What do you do about it?
00:26:18
Speaker
And I was going to add one other point. I don't think everything is about the federal government on this clashing level. I've written about, um, Chico State University in California, but there's also Sonoma State in California.
00:26:32
Speaker
That's the school that actually cut their athletic department and they're having budget and enrollment crisis. And the biggest driver there is enrollment and the state budget.
00:26:43
Speaker
They're going to get cut significantly in California. And I'm not trying to say they're doing perfect moves, but Sonoma State is really addressing the problem, saying we've got to become sustainable.
00:26:55
Speaker
Our mission is not athletics. We've got to focus here. They're exploring shared services with other campuses. They're trying. And they are getting crucified by faculty groups right now.
00:27:09
Speaker
I know another institution in a different state where the same sort of dynamic is happening. The leadership are actually trying to grapple with the issues and they're getting pressure from the state government and the faculty are crucifying them.
00:27:20
Speaker
Yeah. So the point is that dynamic that Morgan mentioned is happening a lot right now. I think it's more a grappling with existential issues. In this case, I think the federal government's just sort of an, sometimes can become a proxy war because there you already have these tensions underneath there um that are happening.
00:27:43
Speaker
And it makes it difficult because schools, particularly regional public universities, They and small private universities, they need to grapple with tough decisions.
00:27:55
Speaker
But it's not just let's make tough choices and see if it works. It's let's make tough choices and see if I even keep my job for the next two months as president at Yeah, and certainly that's, I mean, for maybe for similar reasons or different reasons, that's certainly something I think we're going to be increasingly grappling with, the fact that universities have to make really tough choices.
00:28:15
Speaker
And I think there's already something out, I haven't read it yet, from the Office for Students here around um the potential for kind of future strike action. i think we're going to have but there's going to be a lot of that um about coming up, I think, just because of the difficult situations the universities find themselves in.
00:28:33
Speaker
Absolutely. I do think we need to talk about the AI stuff. That's what I was going to say. Let's shift over to Morgan's second point.
AI in Education: Superficial vs. Innovative Applications
00:28:40
Speaker
So before ASUGSV, they have the AI show.
00:28:44
Speaker
That's a new show that's sort of a sister conference, free registration in the convention center, not in the hotel. walking through seeing the vendors you had the big tech vendors not apple because siri uh got the directions wrong probably showed up in seattle instead of san diego but um you had some big tech vendors in the middle um but if you walk around it was a lot of it was just it's a tutor it's a chatbot with a very thin wrapper to say it's an education this is a teaching assistant this is
00:29:19
Speaker
And it was, okay, that's fine, but that's so shallow. that's When I hear you say superficial, that's what I think of. And I'd say a third of the booths were like that.
00:29:30
Speaker
A third of the booths were general ed tech, where they had AI thrown up on their um the logo somehow or you know on the board. But if you really looked, what do you provide? AI was not...
00:29:44
Speaker
the enabling technology at all. It just wasn't, hey, this is, people are talking about AI. I want a booth there so I can talk to them. So there were some, okay, that's just ed tech, nothing exciting there.
00:29:56
Speaker
And there were a couple that were interesting. so basically nothing meaningful from the booths at the, which is the main part of the AI show um that I saw.
00:30:10
Speaker
i Good for them doing it, but I didn't really see anything exciting at all. And this should be the exciting, the new ideas, the VC funded startups doing something different. And it's not there.
00:30:22
Speaker
Now over in the main ASU GSV show, There were one or two examples, and I'll mention one, but I know that Morgan talked to other people. There was one, Hey Jen, and they they're doing what it ah basically translation. The idea is to take live video, and then if you want to translate it to a different language, it'll do it in your voice of whatever the video was.
00:30:49
Speaker
But not only that, it'll change the video so that your mouth is matching the different language. So it's a much more modern idea. That to me is quite significant for two reasons. One is it expands access to non-native language opportunities for education providers, um the better you can do it, in a much more cost-effective way.
00:31:15
Speaker
The other thing is it gives you the ability to refresh or update your content. ah A year later, i need to tweak a few things to make it more appropriate, and it can enable that whole process. So to me, that is potentially transformative.
00:31:33
Speaker
But what ah exemplified the issue is, and I don't know if, hey, Jen's listening to this podcast, they kept wanting to show me the avatar. They also have this avatar that you can create speaking in this voice that matches what you were saying. And I'm like, avatars, come on, that's so cutesy. I'm not saying nobody wants to use it, but it's secondary. It's like you have something with potential.
00:32:00
Speaker
Take lectures, take educational content from real video and makete and broaden the access in a much better way. But I don't even think Heijin realizes that's a much more transformative part of what they do. And they kept wanting to show me the avatar, which I think was not as important.
00:32:20
Speaker
Yeah, I'm going to button in before Morgan has a term because that kind of and marries up with something I saw recently, which I think is super interesting, which is um a university in Germany called Tomorrow University, where they've essentially launched AI powered, they call them AI powered multilingual degree programmes, which kind of speak to what you're talking about, the ability, you know, it's not just an English programme or a German programme, they're actually using AI for that. And they, I think,
00:32:48
Speaker
I'm not sure if they're a fully online university, but they certainly have a lot of online stuff. And I think that's, you know, there's a lot of news, isn't there? a lot of hype. But the stuff like that really cuts through for me because it's really interesting and powerful.
00:33:01
Speaker
um But not seeing a lot of it, but that was that was something that came on on my radar and it kind of chimes with what you're saying. Yeah, I definitely have to check them out. Yeah, yeah. I'll do that tomorrow. so Yeah.
00:33:12
Speaker
yeah okay Yeah, like, you know, um so, you know, even in terms of the the kinds of things that folks were um exhibiting at the AI show, you know, there was a lot of academic integrity, which I'm very tired of.
00:33:28
Speaker
um But, you know, but again, there was this disjuncture because I had a fascinating conversation with some folks who weren't exhibiting, like Roger Larson from Norvalid and and so on, about how the whole yeah There has been a shift in the way we think about the future of academic integrity is not observing people taking ex exams and things like that. It's got to go in some different kinds of direction. And you know he he has a solution, but other people...
00:33:59
Speaker
also have other solutions. you know So perhaps we need to rethink how we think about that and approach it in a different way. But the kinds of solutions we were seeing there were very old school, you know perhaps lower cost or or or something, but but sort of lower school. Actually, let me throw in one comment and then let you keep going. I moderated a panel um that was on AI moonshots. It was sponsored by Western Governors University and um and the provost of Western Governors. She was one of the panelists.
00:34:28
Speaker
And her phrase was, so they're funding a moonshot idea with AI and that very low cost, expansive access. But they're specifically making the point is they know that most of the work right now is polishing the same rock with AI.
00:34:46
Speaker
And that's where when you say the... There's a lot of polishing the same rock. Yeah, there's a lot of polishing the same rock. So they're going out of their way to say, no, blue sky thinking moonshot.
00:34:56
Speaker
I'm going to force people to think differently of what might happen five or 10 years from now. And I thought that was really important. And you're glad that you have a university like Western Governors that's putting money in into trying to figure that out.
00:35:09
Speaker
Yes. you know And then you know in the in the presentation, you I went to some of the sessions and and things like that, which were difficult to hear because like they were they were divided up in very thin walls. So that was that was a problem. But yeah know there were again, there was a hunger to find things out. like There were a couple of sessions about some of these big universities that are either working with OpenAI or with Anthropic to you know license the technology for the campuses.
00:35:34
Speaker
And nobody actually had any any real strategy. you know It was, yeah, we're going to do it and give people access. And in the anthropic session, the the anthropic person actually said to the audience, which of you on a campus actually have an AI strategy that that you know that you understand? or is and And one guy put up his hand. So there is a hunger there, but nobody's sort of addressing it you know um But but but yeah The other big sort of theme in the in the show was was sort of career tech.
00:36:08
Speaker
And, you know, I think there is, and and and somebody else point pointed this out, which is that there is a bit of a gap, like there's a lot of focus on teaching and learning, on on things like academic integrity, on polishing the same rock, but some of those back office things are really missing from the conversation. And, you know, historically, those are the things where things have really advanced.
00:36:29
Speaker
um and And, you know, Efficiency is is not ah a sexy topic sometimes, but it's a really necessary topic and and it's a way forward. and And that was sort of missing.
00:36:42
Speaker
um But i I came across examples of it actually at the conference, but just not in the show. Yeah, you and I should not run a conference because we'll be pushing for back office innovations and, you some boring things. There'll be plenty of room at the bar at your conferences, I think. That is true. And we might even be there ourselves. But actually, that to a degree ties into the question about the current economic climate not being addressed. Because one of the other things that's happened, we've written about – ah
00:37:13
Speaker
the way the interest rates and the investment climate is really impacting ed tech vendors, but also the cost of universities, and that's leading to so many things. But we're not talking about it. And it sort of goes with what you're saying here. I don't want to imply, oh, AI back office efficiency will solve the other thing.
00:37:33
Speaker
It's more of a, these are tougher, boring topics that are very meaningful that are not getting addressed to the level that they need to be. Now, we might be wonks in wanting to talk about it and should never be able to run our own conference, but i it needs to be discussed.
00:37:54
Speaker
but Tell Neil about the MyDocs, because that to me is interesting. Another example. And I think Phil probably found this guy totally by accident. But we we came across a guy who was the guy who originally developed the company that um later became Parchment. And he has another startup.
00:38:12
Speaker
where he's automating transcript evaluation. So I actually saw a demo of it and it kind of blew my socks off to be to be frank. you know So he had a ah Chinese ah transcript, a Vietnamese transcript and an American transcript, and he just would drag and drop them and boom, they would be translated and evaluated in the sense of like, you know that they would have a ah capacity to to work out what the GPA was and to translate, they would be in the same format. So it was a very easy,
00:38:42
Speaker
evaluation. That's the sort of thing, you know, that really can get to helping students success and and those sort of things. You know, last year, one of the things we came across was Dewey, D-O-O-W-I, which, you know, is a way of really democratizing access to data, you know, that sort of thing.
00:39:00
Speaker
Another example without a solution was I spoke to a a ah somebody in the marketing space, the online marketing space. And yeah he was saying he's under tremendous pressure over the next couple of years. He needs to radically reduce the cost of marketing and he needs to use AI to do that because otherwise he's not going to be in business. And you know I think we need to solve those problems.
00:39:22
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's music to my ears because but those are the kinds of things that I think are so so neglected in this discussion. and they're the sort of things that you know, the underlying foundations of universities and some of the frustrating, laboursome processes and issues that, you know,
00:39:40
Speaker
can get sorted. I mean our government here seems to be keen to um position AI as a solution to those kind of things even though I don't have a lot of confidence in them to to kind of implement them. But I think it's so interesting all of the AI debate because you've got this kind of really devolved technology in a way. You've got loads of students using ChatGPT and you've got yeah I still struggle to see, look, what is the impact on teaching and learning in a demonstrable way that's not us stressing about academic integrity? And I just, i I feel like we're always having this conversation. um That's not to say that nothing is happening, but...
00:40:24
Speaker
ah even even the Even the examples of the big companies working with you universities, think Anthropic um announced they're working with LSE. And you know I'm not wishing to be disparaging about LSE, but these companies often go to the big brand universities. And actually, there's part of me that sometimes think actually...
00:40:44
Speaker
you might get more bang for your buck in terms of the use of this going somewhere somewhere else, frankly. um But there's that kind of brand association that makes that complicated. But yeah, it's still frustrating. And I'm with Morgan. I mean, AI literacy and academic integrity are on my kind of, I don't know what you want to call it, anti-bingo card of AI. i just I'm just like, I'm over it.
00:41:11
Speaker
Actually, you mentioned something I wouldn't mind picking up on. Well, first of all, let me go back to the My Docs example. And i just want to put a phrase to what Morgan was describing. This is what a one of the things that AI is great at, taking unstructured information and structuring it without the massive manpower, womanpower of doing it manually and doing it repeatedly. So I look at that. It's not just it's fascinating to see. It's Oh, you're building on the strength of AI.
00:41:42
Speaker
So that, I think there's a lot more opportunity. Yeah, and where my mind goes, I mean, it's not a massive discussion over here, but because of potential funding changes, there's this talk about kind of facilitating credit transfer between institutions, yeah kind of marrying those things up. there's no I haven't seen anything, unless I've missed it, around the way that AI might help that in some way, shape, or form.
00:42:05
Speaker
you know So, yeah, it's frustrating. There are solutions out there, but you're not finding them in the mainstream kind of conversation. Instead, you get a lot of the sort of like very, um like you saw a lot of use of AI for content creation. And I'm unwowed by that. you know It's mostly very minor kinds of things.
00:42:24
Speaker
putting a bad interaction in there, you know, in a way. Yeah, or just very un-nuanced arguments. If I hear another argument that is essentially, if AI can do this, why why should my students be able to do it? I mean, gosh, can we get a bit more sophisticated than that?
00:42:42
Speaker
So I want to pick up on another thing, and it gets to another topic here that we're not really... hitting yet, but I, and it's, I have a newsletter poster five that's in my head and I've been playing around with it ever since the Google AI and education summit that I went to in the fall.
Big Tech Influence in Education
00:43:00
Speaker
And it's the difference between big tech and tech. And that's part of what we're seeing. We keep referencing it. Oh, big boos. um Google had the longest lines, even worse than, ah bigger than ours, trying to get into our room.
00:43:15
Speaker
um And there's a lot of interest, but you're talking about Meta. You're talking about Google. You had to sign up with Meta to see some of those demos. Anthropic doing this news. The nature of big tech, it's not just that they're bigger and that they have the bigger booze and the more interest.
00:43:33
Speaker
The nature of, but and I'm picking it up because of LSE example. You said a bang for their buck. They're not looking for a bang for their buck. Big tech is doing what they're doing regardless.
00:43:46
Speaker
And their view of education is, hey, you can advise us on what we're already doing and you can come along for the ride and we would love to have the halo that you provide.
00:43:58
Speaker
But they're doing what they're doing. They are not sitting out there in a capitalist mindset of what's their problem? How am I going to be able to serve that problem and make a profit doing so?
00:44:11
Speaker
That's not their mindset. product Product market fit is not something that keeps them up at night. No, I mean, and and it's the PR ah vanity of it that I'm complaining about because it's those things that come to the surface rather than the things that might be happening that are genuinely interesting and genuinely having an impact. so So I think there's yeah there's duality to my kind of issue with with that kind of thing. So my point is they're picking LSE because LSE is well known and they want that halo and they ah PR vanity.
00:44:41
Speaker
Neil's a little bit spicy on his birthday, by the way. you noticed that, Morgan? Yeah. But in any case, that's what they're looking for. But the thing that's challenging is they're the ones that have the greatest opportunity to make true innovation. I mean, look at Notebook LM with Google.
00:44:59
Speaker
Tell me something that's better than that in terms of, wow, that makes you rethink how you could create content in a variety of formats. But they're not looking for product market fit. theyre They're moving along. So that doesn't mean they have no impact, but it's I'm trying to point out it's a very different nature of working with big tech than it is with any of the other ed tech.
00:45:23
Speaker
Yeah, and I don't know if this applies, but I think when um kind of post-pandemic or during the pandemic, you know even just just taking something like video conferencing and things like Teams, you can kind of see how...
00:45:36
Speaker
there's a lack of fit there because you know ah it's so much workforce orientated that it doesn't kind of align that's as closely with education. I think that's and and another a little flavor of the kind of big tech clash with education as well, particularly around kind of productivity. They're not sort of necessarily thinking it from a teaching and learning perspective, but from a kind of business and sort of hacking that into education a little bit.
00:46:00
Speaker
Yep. Well, this is great because I now this... post that's been rattling in my brain for so long. I think the transcript of this example might finally get me to start putting it down um on where it goes. Yeah.
00:46:13
Speaker
Look, whatever you do, Phil, I don't want to see an action figure of you posted on LinkedIn. I just i just want to put that out there to finish this podcast. Studio Ghibli is okay. Just not an action figure.
00:46:28
Speaker
yeah So with that, we will see or hear people or listen, talk to people in a couple of weeks. And thanks a lot.