By Kiran Kodithala

I grew up in a lower-middle-class family in India. That means that I grew up in poverty, comparatively speaking. I came to the United States on a one-way ticket and had just enough money to cover my tuition and my first month’s rent. That’s it. But I was very determined to come. So, my family and I fought against all odds to get me here. Probably the scariest moment of my life was leaving home with nothing and no way to return. My dad took a huge loan on the only house he ever owned to pay for my tuition. So, a lot of fear came along with my journey.

And then the improbable happened.

When I landed at the University of Illinois, I went to the campus and met my graduate dean, Mr. Fitzloff. He first said to me after I said hello, “I’m glad to tell you that you have a full tuition waiver and teaching assistantship and grad assistantship as well.” You could have knocked me over with a feather. Not only did I not have to pay tuition, but I would be making 1,000 bucks a month, more than my dad ever made, working his entire life in India.

I got a job in the IT department in Administrative Information Technology Services. It taught me everything, from how to type to how to do software testing. Eventually, I received training on student information systems, learning management systems, and all the other integrations as part of my work there. That led not only to excitement about the university itself but also a love for the underbelly of the university (the administrative part), which I would not have understood if I were just a consumer of the education system. I became an expert on student information systems and did not see any need to change directions in my career.

The University of Illinois is one of the top 10 institutions in the United States regarding enrollment. As part of their ERP implementation, they took stock of all the integrations, sending data to and from their core student information system and put it all in an inventory. They had roughly 3,570 integrations sending data to and from the base system. They were eventually able to harness, centralize, and consolidate it by moving many things to the enterprise system. But even after that, there were hundreds of integrations that they needed to do. And that helped me understand two things. Universities are very siloed in terms of each department having its data system, and two, the power of simplifying integrations.

The early days of our company, N2N, mostly involved ERP integrations. One day, we got a call from Northeastern University in Boston. One of the principals there told me they had to go live in the next 6 months and build 125 integrations. He asked me if we could do that. We had resources. We had developers. And although we only had a little depth on our bench, we decided to take it on as a challenge. And that was our company in the early days. We would take on a huge project like that and finish it on time, on budget, and at scale.

I Had a Dream

The years passed, and it’s now 2015. We’re building all these scripts and realized what we wanted to do. And this is where I struggle with why I am in higher education in the first place. Because what I wanted to do was to build software as a service (SaaS) for higher education, which included everything. I wanted a mobile application that allowed students to do everything from admissions through graduation and support them every step of the way. I wanted to create a complete API (application programming interface) available through Software as a Service.

I got so brave and excited (and perhaps a bit arrogant) about the idea that I plowed forward even though sales did not support this. So, we began losing money, and by 2017, we were taking on heavy losses. Finally, we had a make-or-break moment; N2N was a sinking ship. We were spending more money than we had. We brought in some private investors, local doctors in Atlanta. They helped us curb the red ink. We decided to stop all the madness and the idea that we could be everything in higher education, and we went back to the thing that made us successful: focusing on APIs.

Our profitability returned. Business was good, and we provided a valuable service to our colleges and universities. And I was becoming used to the idea that this would have to be my contribution to higher education.

Wait. What? Hold the Phone…!

And then, here comes generative AI, which is available as an open source from Open AI. All of a sudden, the dream came crashing back into my mind. Yes, we can build an all-higher-ed system.

The dream, which we call LightLeapAI, is that everything is a system. And it is working. And realistically, it would never have been possible without AI.

What it is

LightLeapAI is an AI-driven platform that transforms higher education by integrating various data systems to improve learning outcomes, streamline administrative tasks, and enhance decision- making processes.

What it does

LightLeapAI leverages artificial intelligence to provide personalized learning experiences, predict student success, automate routine administrative functions, eliminate admissions fraud, and offer actionable insights to educators and administrators.

How it Works

LightLeapAI utilizes advanced algorithms to analyze educational data, enabling personalized student support and optimized institutional operations.

At its core, LightLeapAI employs machine learning and natural language processing to interpret and act on vast amounts of data. It integrates with existing Student Information Systems (SIS) and Learning Management Systems (LMS) to pull relevant information, which it then analyzes to identify patterns and predict outcomes. The platform adapts and improves its predictive capabilities over time through deep learning techniques, ensuring tailored interventions and streamlined processes.

An Institution in Need of Modernization

Higher education is an Institution in need of modernization. Even as technologies have advanced, our education system is still entrenched in outdated practices, hindering our students’ abilities to navigate their academic journeys efficiently. To remain relevant and, yes, competitive, we need to embrace AI’s toolbox and other technologies to streamline processes from registration to graduation. The potential of AI to personalize education, predict student success, and provide actionable insights to educators could revolutionize student learning and administrative efficiency.

Students should be able to search and ask, How can I graduate faster, or What are my other major options? The only possible way is if the system is secure enough and private enough so that we know who the student is and what their education curriculum has been. We can compare it to actual university data. It is simply a matter of connecting all the disparate systems to enable answers to our students’ academic questions.

AI should simplify administrative processes, improve learning outcomes, and offer insights for decision-making. By integrating various data sources and systems, AI can provide personalized recommendations and actions, from course registration to financial aid management. It should also be a boon to the recruiting and admissions process. The AI chatbot can help a candidate understand the nuances that make one institution a better fit, whether class size, additional majors and minors, or religious clubs and organizations. On the admissions side, AI can significantly reduce the workload of evaluators, offering instant conversions of credits, courses, and grades.

Here are some of the changes you should see at colleges and universities very shortly:

The AI Search Bar will Replace the Website Search

Prospective students, current students, employees, and other administrators must click through link after link to access relevant information for campus websites.

Expect most campuses to start redesigning their websites with a simple AI-driven search bar to provide meaningful, relevant, and accurate information to all parties. Many will move their websites to a back closet and use this for source content for the AI tools to parse and present information.

AI Chatbots will Enable Student Services

Though students are tech-savvy and have smartphones and the Internet, they still stand in line at different student services and administrative departments to get specific questions answered. Most administrative departments still interact with students through manual, form-driven operations where the staff member needs to access student information by accessing the administrative system to provide personalized information for that student.

A secure AI chatbot with access to the student information system can be configured to access public and protected student information and provide data-driven answers.

Self-Service Portals will Become Obsolete

Most self-service portals are designed using legacy technologies and are based on data architecture principles of the early web application era. This structure and design make it difficult for institutions to design better self-service applications because vendors often own these portals and related applications. A secure AI platform that connects campus student data with a course catalog can solve the problem of finding the right coursework for students.

AI will Increase Student Success by Identifying Risk

Over the last decade, institutions have spent a fortune on early alert, student advising, faculty training, and many other areas to support student retention and enable students to progress academically. However, most of these investments have had mixed results because of the siloed infrastructure, fragmented student data, and complex analytics of legacy information
systems. First-year retention rates continue to be at or below 40 percent for many institutions and graduation rates continue to be at or below 35 percent on average across the nation.

A connected and secure AI platform can predict possible student risks by evaluating data from housing, parking, cafeterias, learning management systems, and other access management systems. As we connect disparate databases with a secure educational AI Large Language Model (LLM) and expose this to an institution’s secure AI tenant, the system can identify patterns related to learning struggles, emotional issues, substance abuse, and other factors that can negatively affect student success, and communicate this information with related parties securely (complying with FERPA) and on time.

AI will Significantly Reduce Admissions Fraud

Financial aid fraud has resulted in substantial financial losses and administrative issues nationwide. AI will help detect and mark potentially fraudulent applications as they are submitted. Its machine learning algorithms and analytics modules will analyze application patterns and flag suspicious activities. These could include unusual application volumes from similar sources, vector analysis, mismatched geographical data, and patterns that match known fraudulent activities.

Institutions will Shape Their Destinies Using These Available Tools

As we look ahead, the challenge is developing new technologies and applying them to reform and enhance our education systems. By leveraging available AI tools, we can envision a future where education is more accessible, personalized, and efficient, ultimately contributing to a more educated and empowered society.

About the author

Kiran Kodithala is a technology leader and a seasoned expert in the field of educational technology. As the founder and CEO of N2N Services Inc. since 2010, Kiran has been at the forefront of driving innovation in higher education through technology.

With a career spanning over 25 years dedicated to the sector, he has established himself as a pivotal figure in transforming how educational institutions leverage technology for better outcomes.

Under Kiran’s leadership, N2N Services Inc. has grown to become a leading integrator providing cutting-edge solutions to the challenges faced by educational institutions. His passion for integrating technology into education has led to the development of transformative products like Illuminate and LightLeap.ai. These innovative platforms embody his commitment to harnessing the power of AI and secure data integration to revolutionize educational institutions globally.