Arjun Arora Podcast Transcript
Arjun Arora joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to the Coruzant Technologies, Home of The Digital Executive podcast.
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Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Arjun Arora. Arjun Arora is the founder of Advisor AI, an AI native student access platform, helping educational institutions and workforce organizations transform learner engagement, momentum, and economic mobility through ethical human-centered systems.
His work focuses on building responsible AI infrastructure that strengthens advising, improves institutional decision making, and ensures technology enhances rather than replaces the human relationships at the core of education.
Well good afternoon, Arjun. Welcome to the show.
Arora-Arjun: Thank you so much for having me here, Brian, I’m really excited for the conversation.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely my friend. I appreciate it. You’re hailing out of the San Francisco Bay area. I’m in Kansas City, so just two hours today. That’s good to know. Makes it easy to get schedule on the calendars. I know those, that’s tough sometimes. So I appreciate you and Arjun.
I’m gonna jump into your first question. You’ve spent more than a decade leading enterprise AI and data science initiatives before founding advisor ai. What experiences along that journey inspired you to focus specifically on improving student success through technology?
Arjun Arora: For sure. There’s really two main themes that stood out over the last decade.
The first one is I found it somewhat challenging to navigate a lot of the resources early on being an immigrant. Being first generation, and over time I found out that when you do have a clear plan, when you’re very goal oriented, you ask for help, you find the right support, you’re able to navigate a lot of complex steps quickly.
Like, I went from transitioning from a layoff to a new job in like eight weeks. I transitioned to leadership roles within two years. And so, finding the right support, having the right skillset can rapidly accelerate your growth. And so that’s really the fundamental sort of focus around advising and scaling high quality advising.
And then secondly, I’ve also been in sort of really data science AI implementations where I. While provided a lot of business impact saw limited social impact, so really the inspiration there was to help use technology to better support students, to better support individuals, to take that next step where technology is really the means to something.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate the backstory. It helps us here in the audience understand kind of where you came from, how it all started and really the solution behind the problem. I know you did have some success because obviously you worked hard but there was some things you could plug into, whether it was help online, a mentor, et cetera.
It is hard to navigate that, and it can be very challenging. I’m glad that you, what you’re building here is allowing people to accelerate by plugging in and connecting the people with the right platforms, systems, et cetera, so that they can improve their journey as well. So I, again, really appreciate that.
And Arjun Advisor AI now supports hundreds of academic programs and has seen enterprise adoption grow a hundred times. A hundred x as I’d say in just two years. What factors are driving such rapid demand from colleges and workforce organizations?
Arjun Arora: Yeah, there’s really sort of three main trends that are emerging and accelerating the level of interest adoption across institutions.
The first one is enrollment. So, as you may know, a lot of community colleges. As, as, as well as regional institutions are struggling to often differentiate with more competitive offerings. Students also have a lot of choices to pick from today. Like they could go on YouTube or other options. So, do I really need to pursue a college or a degree?
And so being able to compete on enrollments is one area that if there is a way to simplify that, to build interest, to build engagement, institutions are more likely to modernize that front. The second layer really is around graduation rates and retention. So, a lot of institutions outside of really, I look at the top 200, top 300 schools are really challenged with ensuring students are supported, not just when they enroll, but across those two years or four years.
A couple of, a lot of community colleges often have it. 30 to 40% retention rate, which essentially implies that almost one out of two students are not completing their degree. And we all know, like when someone, completes their graduation, completes that certificate, their economic mobility and outcomes are much higher.
So how can again, the same teams modernize that experience as well? The third one is sort of much more out forward looking or after graduation, which is economic mobility, workforce readiness. And now with the trends in the labor market, AI disrupting jobs, it’s really encouraging or accelerating the need for institutions to adapt the services that they are providing and make sure that all students are prepared for what is next.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. And the th the three main trends that you talked about, and I just wanted to highlight that they’re emerging at the moment is obviously colleges are trying to be more competitive in these areas. You talked about enrollment, providing choices for the students, of course, graduation rates and retention.
You went into a little bit of that and then that forward thinking, looking about how do we again, connect those, new students that are graduating into the workforce and streamline that process. I think that’s important. Obviously that’s why everybody goes to college, right? To kind of set that foundation for their career, so I appreciate that.
And Arjun, my next question, economic mobility is a central theme of your work. How can AI driven advising help institutions better support first generation students and underserved communities?
Arjun Arora: Thank you. I think I always like to step back and frame this AI driven requirement as what is the use case We are often solving.
I think there’s a lot of hype or interest around AI driven systems without really drilling down into what is the challenge or what is the benefit. And so like I, I think firstly this is really about scaling advising. Which is to say that when more advising is done to that, for that first generation student, when there’s clarity on, you know, am I going to become an engineer and what are the courses or certificates or skills I need to develop to become an engineer?
The economic mobility is a automatic sort of outcome to that skill development. And so it’s really much more I see the focus is to scale. Advising or services that are already proven evidence-based and effective, and AI is really just that mechanism or means that is now allowing us to personalize advising at a level that wasn’t previously possible with capacity constraints.
As well as making it engaging and conversational. It’s, it’s not as complex or a cumbersome task that takes six to eight weeks. It’s something that I can do in 10 minutes, which is create a plan, create a roadmap, sort of like a GPS like system.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. And again, at the end of the day, you just don’t build things because something sounds cool.
You ask that question, you know, what problem are you trying to solve? And I think that’s so important. To scale advising. And I agree, we all know this. It’s a struggle when students first get into college, but asking those right questions and as you said, really personalizing the, that advising based on student needs, career plan, that sort of thing.
And, and you do help again, scale and make sure that this long-term success of the student is there. And I, I really appreciate that. And Arjun, the last question of the day here. As we look ahead to the future, how do you see AI reshaping the future of higher education, workforce development, and lifelong learning over the next decade?
Arjun Arora: So, really great question. After being in AI for. 10 years and building data solutions. I think the biggest insight, or something we don’t emphasize enough of is that people are really the ones that make that transformation happen. And especially in a context of like education and advising.
Like you can have the best and most exciting AI tool, but if people, whether that’s the student or the advisors are not. Part of the process and how the AI is really augmenting or streamlining things. A lot of transformation would not happen. And so that’s really like a sort of fundamental lens. More specifically drilling down into how can, how does AI really help along those areas?
I sort of look at, you know, when it comes to a student’s lens or experience, it’s something that would take eight weeks can now be done in. 30 minutes, whether that’s what is the right course for me, what’s the right degree for me, and what skills should I be developing over the next two years, one year.
That process is much more efficient now than was previously possible. If you look at more institutional lens, which is. Administration, advisors across different types of colleges, undergraduate, graduate programs, that’s not just even isolated to the US but also global programs that we are starting to speak with across Middle East, Australia and so forth.
What it’s, what AI is really helping teams do now is that instead of the information gathering or planning tasks that teams would have to, maybe spend at least a week for a group of students can now be automated so that the conversation that a faculty or professor or advisor is now having is much more strategic.
It’s much more developmental around, oh, Arjun, like, I think you’re stuck here, or you don’t know what to do next. Let me intervene and show you the right resource, versus here’s the course you should be taking to become an engineer. And so it’s much more transformational. I see that AI is helping accelerate the experience as well as make it simple.
And intuitive to connect the dots across a lot of these fragmented systems that exist today.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. Really making the world a better place. So with your insights, looking to the future and I absolutely agree, I think every guest I’ve had on the show, over 1200 we certainly can agree on. One thing is at the end of the day, people are the foundational fabric of our global community.
And you hit that right on without people. Are we right? So we have that, but you add that AI layer as you talked about, automating, really accelerating experience helps streamline this process efficiency and accuracy. It really puts the right people in their right career paths much faster and like I said, more, more efficiently.
So, I really appreciate your insights and Arjun, it was such a pleasure having you on today, and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Arjun Arora: Thank you so much for having me on, Brian, really appreciate the time and the conversation.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Arjun Arora Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
