How AI Can Help Universities Develop Deeper Relationships

Some chatbots and messaging services can feel transactional, especially in commercial settings, when they spur consumers to finish online purchases or pay bills. For colleges and universities that develop much deeper relationships with students, faculty, alumni, and parents, these tools–especially when combined with large language model artificial intelligence platforms–can help them use data to connect in more meaningful ways.

“Students are not there for transactional purposes,” says Matt Baker, Associate Vice President of Product Management at Mongoose, which develops conversational software for higher education. “Yes, they are spending money, but they are also there to help the university invest in them, and then in the long term, invest in the university and in society.” 

Mongoose is an engagement platform that streamlines communications and helps create conversation opportunities with prospective and current students, faculty, alumni, and donors. Developed exclusively for higher education, Mongoose leadership and staff, including Baker, rely on their higher ed backgrounds to create and refine solutions that meet the industry’s unique needs. By using SMS messaging, chatbots, and text campaigns, Mongoose “makes sure you’re having the right conversations with your constituents,” Baker says.

Unlocking the Meaning Behind Data

Beyond the platform’s core communications functions, Baker sees a real opportunity to use insights from artificial intelligence (AI) to improve enrollment, engagement, and donor management. Mongoose can take the data from conversations with students, faculty, alumni, and parents and then utilize AI to help universities gain valuable insights. 

Universities typically track engagement through a series of milestones, he explains. With prospective students, for example, institutions track data like visits to the website, information sessions, campus visits, and applications. Universities use this data to develop engagement scores, which they often feed into models to help predict outcomes. 

Most universities, however, are not able to utilize conversation content, Baker says, “because it’s noisy and unstructured.” That’s where Mongoose comes in. After gathering data from the text and chat functions, Mongoose AI reads the conversations and converts them into tabular data that institutions can consume, whether in simple reports for trend analysis or real-time predictive model enrichment. “AI can explain the messy data between milestones, leveraging it to get ahead of issues and giving staff the opportunity to engage on a more meaningful level,” he says. 

How Institutions Can Leverage These Tools

These tools can apply to students, no matter where they are on their journey–from prospects to alumni, Baker says.  “AI can help unlock data from conversations, so universities can learn from something that’s been inaccessible in the past. That can help schools connect with constituents in more meaningful ways,” he adds. 

For prospective students, that can include embedding a chatbot on university websites that can help with everything from answering questions to inviting them to a meet and greet. SMS campaigns can help nudge interested students to apply and remind them of application deadlines. But beyond that, AI can help universities identify recurring questions or concerns, so institutions can address them head-on in their communications channels, before students even ask. 

“This year, FAFSA was a huge concern,” Baker says. “Using AI, universities can look at the tone of the conversations on FAFSA and determine if they’re positive or negative, if their staff needs to provide reassurance or more assistance. We can also see if additional training may be required for the staff.” 

Once students are enrolled, Mongoose insights can help support their success by reminding them to register for courses through text templates. The chat tools can aid in more meaningful engagement, helping connect students with mental health counselors if they feel overwhelmed. When the data flags students who may be at risk for dropping out, an institution can send them encouraging SMS messages. Institutions can even use the tools to aid in predictive modeling for enrollment and graduation time. 

Alumni and donor relations offices can use the tools to create more personalized campaigns to reach graduates and donors, Baker says, while AI can help them understand the sentiments behind gifts. 

While this kind of metadata is readily available to universities using chat and text services, Baker says many of them don’t take advantage of it. “It can be messy because it’s just words and is unstructured. They may not be resourced to manage it, but AI can help make sense of it and provide valuable insights. These conversations are valuable in the moment they occur, but they’re greatly underutilized in providing a microscopic lens into what is being said, felt, and talked about at any given moment,” Baker says.  

AI can even combat bias in some predictive models. For example, Baker points out that many enrollment models make large assumptions on important topics based on historical trends. These models rely on census tract and zip code data to understand the price sensitivity of interested students, helping them select which prospects may need aid. 

But in some high-income neighborhoods, the model may miss a lower-income student, leading the university to miss students who would attend if they understood the kind of aid available. AI can pick up on cues from conversations that could inform universities about students’ financial needs in ways these models do not capture on their own. 

“These models don’t get down to the individual,” Baker says. “The beautiful thing about GPT is the dynamic understanding of language in a way that can better inform the models,” he adds. “If in mining the student’s conversations, we can detect that they talk about financial information or other key topics, a university can send the student the relevant financial aid information they need at that moment, making them more likely to move forward in the process.”

Integrating AI in higher education is revolutionizing how institutions engage with their communities. Using advanced data insights, universities can foster deeper, more meaningful relationships with students, faculty, alumni, and donors. Platforms like Mongoose demonstrate the potential of AI to not only streamline communication but also to turn unstructured data into actionable insights. This ensures institutions can better support their students by anticipating their needs and personalizing interactions, ultimately fostering a stronger, more connected community. 

This custom content was developed in partnership with Inside Higher Ed’s sponsored content team.

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