Most "AI in higher ed" conversations start and end with chatbots. This session goes underneath that, into the data and logic layer that makes any AI agent trustworthy enough to take action on your campus.
Vinay Bhaskara, Co-founder at CollegeVine walks through the ontology: a unified data, rules, and permissions layer that sits on top of your SIS, ERP, CRM, and department-specific systems (housing, athletics, grants admin, and more), and turns institutional knowledge and business processes into deterministic code.
On top of that single infrastructure layer, CollegeVine's 250+ partner institutions deploy AI agents, automated workflows, custom software applications, and ML models across enrollment, student services, IT, HR, finance, and cross-institutional work like accessibility and accreditation.
What's covered:
- Why chatbots are the least interesting thing AI can do for a campus
- How the ontology unifies data, then encodes institutional rules and business processes as deterministic logic
- Why ~95% of building the ontology is done by an agentic pipeline, with your team reviewing rather than building
- A live demo: a student onboarding agent handling a real enrollment call, including switching languages mid-call for a parent
- Zero-trust security architecture: how permissions are enforced at the data layer so an agent only ever sees what a specific person is allowed to see
- Real examples beyond enrollment: invoice/contract compliance agents, GPA recalculation, degree planning apps, SAP risk models
- Implementation timeline and typical team size and cost
Presented as part of EDUCAUSE Demo Day: Chatbots and Virtual Assistants.
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