AI in higher education is everywhere right now, but most of what schools hear is theory, hype, or another vendor promise. We wanted something more concrete, so I sat down with Ruben Harris and Timur Meyster, co-founders of Outrival (and previously Career Karma), to talk about what it looks like to deploy a real “digital workforce” that supports students at scale without pushing humans out of the loop.

We get specific about outbound AI agents that call and text proactively across the student lifecycle, from enrollment to retention and re-enrollment. Ruben and Timur share why they avoid one-size-fits-all bots and instead give each digital worker a clear job description tied to measurable goals like meaningful conversations, contact rates, persistence, and ROI. We also dig into practical use cases colleges can start with quickly, including reaching out to stop-outs, following up with prospective students who went quiet, and helping learners navigate complex steps like financial aid and missing documents, all while integrating with systems like Slate and Salesforce.

Then we talk about what leaders actually need to manage this well: student feedback via text surveys, dashboards that surface patterns across thousands of conversations, and a real supervision model that includes training, objection handling, tone and voice tuning, and ongoing compliance considerations like FERPA and responsible outreach. We also preview Ruben and Timur’s new series, The New Normal, focused on institutions using AI in production at scale.

Subscribe, share this episode with a colleague, and leave a review if it helped you think more clearly about AI strategy that actually shows results.

https://www.outrival.com/

https://www.outrival.com/blog/the-new-normal

eloy@4leggedmedia.com