Last week was the 16th Annual ASU GSV Summit covering all manner of topics from “PreK to Gray” learning and workforce development.
The Kiosk team has attended over a dozen of the Summits and seen the shifts from a couple of hundred people gathering in Phoenix close to Arizona State University (ASU) and focused more on higher education to the latest iterations that are attracting over 7,000 people and is more focused on K12.
There is still a passion for education
The scale of the conference is a testament to the importance of the work and the passion of the policymakers, entrepreneurs, funders, and educators.
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon
Despite the suggested demise of the Department of Education, Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon attended the conference. She spoke on the main stage, demonstrating her passion for education and her support for educating young people. She also reaffirmed the Administration’s commitment to some basic tenets of education. There was plenty that was left unspoken in the collegial atmosphere of the summit, the moderators asked a couple of pointed questions about educating students from different backgrounds and supporting students who needed more help but didn’t press on the responses. The feeling was one of pragmatism in the face of shifting priorities versus antagonism.
A collective buzz of excitement with an undercurrent of foreboding
That same sense pervaded the conference as there was a palpable buzz about the annual conclave with people ready to get things accomplished no matter the regulatory environment. A few of the attendees who focused on K12 lamented that there was less enthusiasm overall and a sense of malaise, while the higher education attendees commented on the amount of K12. The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Goldie Blumenstyk, who announced her retirement earlier this year, fired away at complacency, complicity, and the status quo in higher education, “this is not disruption, this is destruction.”
The week prior was the UPCEA Annual Conference in Denver and while the cast of speakers was less star-studded, the focus was firmly on higher education and people who were doing the jobs.
AI is ever present
At both conferences, AI was ever present. Sessions covered everything from how we are going to effectively use AI in delivering learning to students to the management of recruitment, the placement of candidates in jobs, the preparation of candidates for the jobs of the future, the improvement of marketing and efficiency of all manner of workflows.
Economic and demographic uncertainty
The economy and economic uncertainty weighed on educators and business partners. In the past, economic uncertainty would drive people to higher education as individuals would seek chances to improve themselves while the economy is bad in preparation for an upturn. However, the feeling was that the $1.6 trillion student debt (around the GDP of Australia and South Korea by the way) is an impediment to the uptake of more education for US nationals. This while the current policy positions within the US are driving people away from coming to the US for secondary education. To top it off, the demographic cliff, which had been spoken about, is coming into focus.
Traditional sources of prospect interest are drying up
Enrollment marketers were commenting about how traditional sources of prospect interest, like Google and Meta, are no longer delivering at the same rate of return. Some were commenting about how large language models (LLMs) were taking traffic away from their ad campaigns, while others were commenting that conversion rates for the traffic were down. Others suggested ways that they were deploying AIO (AI Optimization, akin to SEO, search engine optimization) to try to gain more traffic back to their websites for conversion. And others were wondering whether the shift in media behaviors and loss of conversion rate was due to economic and demographic uncertainty.
Perpetual optimism
“Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier” – Colin Powell
While there is very real uncertainty and upheaval in the education market, there is also a prevailing sense of optimism. The way that people react to change is by utilizing skills developed through education. Young people (or young AIs if you’re cynical) need to be educated. Educators and educational institutions are the best positioned to support our future citizens, leaders, and workforce. There is a lot of work to be done.