higher ed

Higher education is entering a new chapter. Yes, enrollment is shifting, budgets are tightening, and student expectations are evolving faster than ever, but these challenges also open the door to innovation. One of the most exciting tools at the center of this transformation is AI, as it is a real opportunity to enhance efficiency, personalize experiences, and amplify your team’s impact. You don’t need to be a tech whiz to take advantage of it, but you do need a clear understanding of what AI can do today, where it’s already making a difference in higher ed, and how to lead the way.

Let’s take a look.

What AI is and isn’t

Before we even think about strategy, we need to understand what AI is and isn’t. It’s not a replacement for your human team, nor is it a silver bullet that will help save struggling departments or instantly cut your workload in half. It’s more like an always-on assistant (I often call it your bionic arm), that can help in a number of ways, such as

Drafting emails and reports so much faster than you can
Summarizing complex meeting transcripts or documents
Analyzing enrollment or marketing trends
Generating different versions of content for different audiences

But someone still needs to set the direction, provide the context, and review outputs for alignment with your unique mission.

Higher ed‘s current use of AI

Many colleges and universities are no longer wondering if they should use AI. They’re already refining how they use it strategically. For example,

Marketing and Communications

Segment emails for prospective students, alumni, and donors
Draft event invites and newsletters tailored for different audiences
Audit communications for tone, consistency, and inclusive language
Summarize content performance or campaign reach

Example: Marketing teams use AI tools to generate multiple email or invitation drafts, which frees up time for higher-level planning.

Enrollment Management

Personalize interest-based content at scale for different types of students
Identify signals of student interest or drop-off through identifying patterns
Summarize notes from hundreds of student interactions to detect themes

For instance, by using AI to analyze application essays or email interactions, institutions can detect trends in applicant concerns, then address them directly in targeted outreach.

Advancement and Alumni Relations

Draft donor letters and campaign communications customized for audience segments
Summarize long board reports into digestible briefs
Generate recognition copy for milestones or giving anniversaries

AI can save many hours by helping staff convert board updates into concise leadership emails that keep everyone informed quickly.

Student Success and Advising

Automate regular nudges for key milestones to boost student retention
Personalize messages to students who might be at risk or need support
Translate complex policy language into plain English tips or FAQs

For examples, advisers may use AI-powered platforms to proactive reach out to students ahead of registration deadlines.

Internal Operations and Administration

Summarize transcripts or documentation from meetings and committee sessions
Draft and edit job descriptions
Quickly create executive summaries from sprawling reports

HR and operations teams rely on AI to condense meeting notes into checklists and action items, which makes follow-through easier across teams.

What Higher Ed VPs need to focus on

With AI already integrated into so many aspects of campus operations, here are a few ares that VPs should focus on:

Strategic structure

The real magic happens when you move past occasional, one-off uses (“write this newsletter”) and start structuring AI into ongoing workflows that learn and improve. AI is about compounding value. For example, once you have a playbook for drafting segmented campaigns or summarizing meeting notes, you can refine it over time, increasing quality while saving more staff time with each cycle.

Strategy guides the tools

AI’s strength is in scale and speed, and definitely not in institutional memory, culture, or nuanced judgment. This means no matter how powerful the tool, your strategy always leads the way. You know what resonates with your alumni better than any AI tool ever could.

Focus on real-world problems

Ask practical questions such as

Where are staff bogged down by repetitive or time-consuming tasks?
What processes cause delays or burn valuable staff hours?
Which areas could benefit from faster, more personalized communication?

Start by solving the real bottlenecks your teams talk about every month. That’s where AI delivers the biggest, most immediate ROI in higher education.

Questions every higher ed leader should ask

If you want AI to be a multiplier instead of a distraction, start with these questions:

Where are we using AI already and who is governing it?

Chances are, faculty or staff are already using tools like ChatGPT, Grammarly, or other writing aids. You may already have AI-features in your Content Management System. Map out where these tools are deployed and who is making operational or ethical choices about them.

Do we have shared guidelines?

Establish simple, clear principles for responsible AI use:

What counts as acceptable use?
Are outputs fact-checked for accuracy and tone?
Does the use align with your brand and values?
How will you ensure accessibility for all users?
Are there any other legal ramifications that we need to be aware of?

What type of training is needed?

Staff anxiety about “messing things up with AI” is real. Leaders can speed up adoption and prevent misuse by offering guides, practice sessions, and safe spaces to experiment and become more proficient.

What higher ed VPs shouldn’t worry about

Here’s what you do not have to do:

Learn prompt engineering from scratch. Use, adapt, and share prompts that have already proven effective (see these prompt examples).
Approve every single AI use case. Trust frontline teams with clear parameters and encourage smart experimentation.
Invest heavily on day one. Most effective AI solutions start at departmental or pilot scale. Scale up tools only when you have evidence of need and success.

The shifting role of higher ed leadership in the AI era

The institutions that succeed won’t necessarily have the flashiest tech stack. Neither will they be the ones who cling to old ways of thinking. Instead, those that thrive will be led by VPs and executives who align AI adoption with mission and culture, set clear expectations and boundaries, encourage cross-team sharing and learning, and stay committed to ethical, accessible, and transparent practices.

What about you? What would you add to the list of things that higher ed VPs should know about AI?

I’ve been thinking about higher ed a lot (even more than usual) these days, as it’s facing some challenging times, so I’ll be posting a bit more higher-ed focused content on here.

AI isn’t just another way to save a few minutes on your next campaign. For marketers in higher ed, it offers a lot more. In fact, if used wisely, it can become a system that makes every piece of work more efficient, more insightful, and more effective the more you use it. It’s often referred to as the AI Flywheel.

Let’s take a look at how higher ed marketing teams can move beyond one-off AI prompts and quick fixes, and start building systems that get smarter, faster, and more valuable with each cycle. If you’re spending too much time feeling like every enrollment or giving campaign is a new lift (like planning Welcome Week for the third time in six months), this approach will help you shift from reinvention to momentum.

Why AI in higher ed is not just about faster emails

Higher ed marketers operate in a world defined by big challenges and limited resources. Budgets are tight, teams are lean, and institutional expectations keep growing. And yes, you’re still somehow expected to write like a copywriter, strategize like a VP, and test like a CRO, all before lunch.

Think about it like this: You don’t want a robot that spits out a decent subject line when you ask. Instead, you want to me more ambitious and develop a process that helps your marketing team get sharper, learn from every email sent, and make the next campaign even more relevant, personalized, and achieve better results.

What is the AI Flywheel?

The AI Flywheel is a feedback loop with the intention to compound value. Instead of approaching tasks in isolation, the AI Flywheel connects every prompt, every campaign, and every data point so that the next round is always easier and more effective.

For example:

Ask AI to draft initial content for anything from an email to an event invitation.
Refine the output, shaping the tone and content to match your institution’s brand, tone, and values.
Reuse the structure or logic behind successful outputs for new use cases or audiences.
Analyze the response data. Did students click more? Did parents open less? What seemed to resonate?
Feed those insights right back into the next prompt, so that each turn becomes faster and smarter.

Instead of improving by accident, you develop a plan. Your systems, prompts, and institutional knowledge compound, which can make each campaign more agile and aligned.

How to build an AI Flywheel in higher ed marketing

Here’s how your marketing team can get started:

1. Design prompts for systems, not just single results

Don’t just ask AI to “write a welcome email for new students.” Instead, break the campaign down and think in terms of building blocks you and your team can reuse across future projects.

For a student welcome series, your AI prompt structure might include:

A general template with modular sections (intro, campus highlight, quick next steps, CTA)
Personalization variations (first-generation, out-of-state, transfer)
Follow-up text messages
Web teasers for cross-channel promotion

Whenever possible, capture not only the result but also the reusable logic and variants. This way, your initial prompt seeds a content system rather than a one-and-done piece.

2. Create a living context file

AI is only as good as the context you give it. Feed your key institutional inputs into your AI companion or prompt library:

Brand voice and tone (welcoming, inclusive, aspirational, empathetic)
Personas (prospective students, parents, alumni, faculty, donors, employers)
Differentiators (small class sizes, experiential learning, first-year programs)
Strategic goals (increase applications, grow out-of-state reach, boost giving, increase student retention)

Example:

“Using our brand voice, draft a headline and subhead for our rural-first-gen scholarship landing page.”

Your context doc becomes a shared institutional brain, without needing to Slack a coworker for that one tagline she wrote back in 2019.

3. Turn every output into a future input

Every campaign, message, or landing page is a learning opportunity. Once you send an email with great open rates or a text message that parents forward widely, don’t just celebrate and move on. Feed that result back into your AI system.

For instance, prompt your tool with:

This open house email had a 52% open rate and strong parent engagement. Use it as a model to draft a campaign for our admitted student event.

This way, you’re building institutional intelligence that compounds, turning AI into a digital team member who remembers what worked (and what fell flat) last semester, last year, and beyond.

4. Systematize with a prompt library

Organize your prompts and templates so you’re never starting from scratch. Think of this as your team’s living playbook, where you collect and annotate things like

Outreach plan evaluations
Donor message variants based on giving history
Career-focused homepage copy
Accessibility and language audits
Infographic summaries

This living library becomes more valuable with each project, which can help make every new campaign both faster and more targeted.

Benefits of the AI Flywheel for higher ed teams

Scalable personalization: AI enables you to deliver tailored messaging, but the flywheel structure prevents your small team from reinventing the wheel with every campaign.

Consistent messaging: Centralized inputs, living prompt libraries, and reusable assets mean that your voice, values, and strategy show up seamlessly wherever your audience is.

Smarter and faster decision-making: Data feeds back into your system after every initiative, enabling rapid learning and focused improvements instead of guesswork.

Sustainable marketing systems: Even with staff changes or shifting priorities, your documented systems make it easy for new team members to ramp up and keep improving what’s working best.

How to get started

You don’t need a large team or a massive investment to begin. Start small and intentionally:

Save your three most-used prompts and tweak them with every cycle
Keep a shared doc with core messaging, personas, and brand guidelines
Make a habit of reviewing results and adding insights back into your system

Over time, your flywheel will pick up speed, giving your institution compound returns and marketing agility.

What about you? Have you started working on your AI Flywheel?

lead up

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What Higher Ed VPs should know about AI