Episode 49: Combining the Forces of AI and Human Assistance with Dr. Mike Bills, President at AtlasRTX

The more you dig into the layers of higher education, the more equity gaps you run into. However, you'll find no bigger fan of community colleges than Dr. Mike Bills, president at AtlasRTX (which stands for Real Time Experience).

AtlasRTX's industry-leading chatbots engage students automatically 24/7, allowing college staff to focus on high-value tasks only they can perform. Being the first in his family to graduate college, his own firsthand experiences inspired him to focus on the issues within higher education—because community colleges are where the lion's share of people from historically underserved populations enroll in college in the first place. It's a plus that community colleges are open access, but there's very little benefit for students simply to have been there. What we end up with is more people with student loan debt and no degree.

Higher education in the United States was built to be incredibly exclusive. Wealthy white males were the only people that were welcome at Harvard, which was the original college in the United States. According to the US News and World Report rankings, the arbiter of what qualifies as a good school or a mediocre school is, in part, how many people are excluded. Schools aren't evaluated on how well they educate people but rather on how selective they are with new students coming in. Unfortunately, this has led to many colleges and universities continuing to focus on being more and more selective. In fact, if you try to become more egalitarian and accept more students, the US News and World Report rankings will "punish" you. We've had this foundation of arbitrary exclusion from the beginning, by design. There are still a lot of powerful forces that support this attitude that it is a virtue to keep people out of certain institutions.

The acceptance rate issue is a two-pronged affair. Firstly, it enables colleges to say, "Yeah, we are low acceptance, that means that gives us the right to charge obscene amounts of money." Secondly, community colleges and vocational schools that are extremely accepting are looked down upon, not only by other institutions but by some parents and kids as well.

There are all these great tools from Amazon and Google using artificial intelligence or machine learning. For example, when you log into Amazon, you can see exactly what groceries you like to buy, what pen you like to use, or what electronics your child uses. Because of the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning, there's no reason why community colleges or four-year colleges can't take advantage of the great technology environment we're in right now.

There's a ton of academic research that shows that the more contact students have with advisors, counselors, and other staff members, the more likely they are to graduate. At scale, there's no way every student can get sufficient help from a human being, but they can from an AI digital assistant that's available 20/7 and speaks 100 languages. 

The AtlasRTX approach to chatbots is that humans and AI are better together. Bots are very smart, but they're not human. They're not supposed to completely supplant human beings, they're supposed to augment the human staff. So for example, if there is a question regarding which class a student should take, that can absolutely be handled by a chatbot. If the chatbot knows the courses that you've already taken and the grades you got, it can recommend that you make an appointment with a human staff member who can then engage with you in an empathetic way. AI is good at diagnosing and handling repetitive tasks, but when you need something that requires a lot of expert explanation or exploration by a staff member, both AI and humans can work together as a team to deliver an optimal experience for students.

As a society, we put a lot of value on traditions, and those traditions seep into the way that we teach—despite there being plenty of research that shows that traditional methods of teaching are pedagogically inferior to incorporating technology and experiential learning. The idea of having chatbots help students apply for programs, get financial aid, and get help with sensitive topics can seem too "science fiction" to many in areas of higher education that place high value on tradition.

It's interesting how many international students choose to engage with AtlasRTX's chatbot in their native language rather than in English. When it comes to really technical stuff, they might not have the English vocabulary to completely express themselves. Having the option to start engaging with the chatbot in their own language without having to go through a menu immediately closes an equity gap. All they have to do is start chatting in their native language and the chatbot will engage right back. It enables and empowers students that don't necessarily speak English, opening up this process to people that might otherwise be cut off from it.

Fundamentally, what distinguishes AtlasRTX from other conversational AI providers is that most of them focus on one task. AtlasRTX is a platform that serves students through their entire student journey from exploration to application, supporting them all the way through to graduation. Since students are engaging with the same platform, the platform knows who the student is, what they've discussed before, and is able to engage the student in a way that's not just a bunch of frequently asked questions with canned answers. The digital assistants can engage with the student and talk specifically to them about how they're progressing.

Dr. Bills kept seeing over and over how unfair our system of higher education is, and how the colleges that we hold in high regard are only put on a pedestal because of selection bias.

In addition to that selection bias, the cost structure in higher education is unsustainable. The HEPI (Higher Education Price Index) is always at least two times higher than the consumer price index, and that means that our system is pricing out most people. As a result, more alternatives and competition will be forced to emerge. It may not necessarily be a big revolution. But there will be an evolution, as more technology comes into the education space and handles everything it can. Most of that innovation will come from schools that are doing a lot more with a lot less.

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