Before we founded CampusESP, Dave was the SVP of Product at Ellucian. He was responsible for Banner at over 1200 schools across the world (sorry about that, by the way). James was the Vice President of Technology at nexxt.com, one of the largest recruitment technology companies, helping millions of people find their dream jobs. 

We've seen a lot of technology hype cycles. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is in a hype cycle.

What's a "hype cycle"?

Gartner is a research and advisory company that provides insights and guidance to businesses in IT. They regularly talk about the maturity of new technologies using their Hype Cycle chart. New technologies:

1. Inflated expectations at the beginning (Literally called the Peak of Inflated Expectations)

2. Often disappoint the market meeting those expectations (the Trough of Disillusionment) 

3. Eventually become useful technology to the mass market (the Plateau of Productivity)

Whether it's blockchain, BYOD, big data ... or AI ... most tech goes through this hype cycle. In fact, looking at the Hype Cycle from 2023, you can see most of the "AI dots" are at the very early stages of this cycle.

So what? Who cares?

Tech companies care. The median revenue multiple for AI companies is at 26x! Compare that to the "normal" valuation of edtech companies...about 6x. All tech companies need to say they have AI - whether they do or not - in order to increase their value.

Colleges care. AI feels forward thinking. If a college is going to make a technology investment, they need to know their investment is going to be around for the long-term. Companies that integrate AI into their offerings (to solve problems more efficiently) will be the winners. 

CampusESP cares. CampusESP is one of the companies adding AI features. Our latest release incorporates generative AI (the part of AI that helps you write stuff) to help create better content for parents and families. We're also working on predictive modeling AI to support student yield models and student success predictors.

But look....It's early. Don't get too enamored with the AI Hype Cycle. It's still about how a company uses AI to solve problems (and whether it really solves them). Our customers don’t always have the resources to support strategic parent engagement. It’s the perfect starting place for AI.

CampusESP launches new AI-Powered Content

“What can we do to make it easier for colleges to create parent-focused content?" It was the perfect starting point for adding AI to CampusESP. With our latest release delivered to all customers last week, we make it easy to:

• Develop new content from scratch. Just prompt the AI editor to provide 10 tips for move-in or simple guidance for the FAFSA – and sit back and watch

• Edit the tone to be more friendly, more professional, or a dozen other options

• Translate the language to reach more international families 

• Fix any mistakes

• Transform existing content into a shorter SMS in one click

• Suggest Alt Text for accessible image descriptions 

• And much more!

Where do we (and AI) go from here? It’s all about looking beyond the hype cycle and applying AI to today's most pressing parent engagement problems. CampusESP makes sure you keep up-to-date with parent expectations and new technology!