Higher education was born, in places like Oxford and Cambridge, as a tutorial system. But over the centuries, higher education moved further and further away from that model through waves of expansion and democratization—reaching a point where the 500-person lecture hall came to be synonymous with college.
But now, with AI we can see the outlines of a world where it's actually possible to have hyper-personalized education, learning and career development at scale..” It’s a term of art for a world where services that could previously only be done by humans can be replaced partially or fully by technology. For a sector so dependent on services, this shift opens up new solutions, new business models, and new markets focused on unlocking human potential.
AI can change those prospects. By dramatically reducing the cost of human-like support and communication, AI shifts the potential profit margins in edtech and HR services companies from the 30% that is typical in service businesses to the 75%-plus margins seen in software companies. This shift to service-as-software creates working capital to invest in building quality experiences and getting those products in the hands of more people.