TWICV special with Ashley Kern from Sightline (June 25, 2024)

Welcome back to another episode, a special episode of This Week in College Viability. Hi, my name is Gary Stocker. Joining me today as a very special guest is Ashley Kern. Ashley is the founder and a data scientist at a company called Sightline, and she is part of what I see as a growing trend of higher education data entrepreneurs. Ashley is a former mathematics and data science student And she claims her superpower is solving complex problems. I can tell you it indeed is a super problem. And she, and she uses that to help colleges with data. And Lord knows colleges need help with data. And her Sightline team is currently focusing on creating data-based solutions to improve college and university operations. And again, while trying to make education more accessible and affordable for college students everywhere. She'll tell us more about that shortly. Ashley, welcome to This Week in College Viability.

Thanks so much for having me, Gary. You're always so, so flattering. Just excited to be here. And I'm really grateful that you provide a platform for people to share different views on, like you said, these big problems in higher ed. So happy to chat about it.

Indeed. Many views are needed for sure. Well, Sightline, you know, of course, I, you and I have talked before. I've looked at your site. I've used your stuff to the extent that I can. Tell us about Sightline and its history.

Yeah, Sightline is a boutique predictive analytics firm focusing on higher ed. I started out as a data science consultant in a lot of different fields, kind of a general data science person, and really zeroed in on higher ed in 2018, which was a good time, I think, to get focused on higher ed before COVID So I could understand, like, how did these systems work before? And see the disruption and see, you know, the way ideas are changing and maybe the catalyst for some new opportunities. So we do a lot of kind of the standard services that a lot of higher ed consultants do as far as financial aid optimization, enrollment forecasting, enrollment strategy, identifying at-risk students for dropping out. And then we also do— so those are kind of the things that universities would maybe approach us about initially. But we also do a lot of custom research as well. So we get to hear, there's a lot of higher ed leaders that have these hypotheses about what's happening with their students. And they don't really have like the time or the resources to tackle them. And a lot of them are data people as well, but they're like, I just don't have the time to do this. So they throw these tough problems at us and we get to hear really interesting, you know, thesis, theses and concepts that come out of it and hopefully find some solutions for them.

Interesting. Now, you and I both know there are many companies, both large and boutiques like yours and even mine, in the higher ed data space. How is Sightline— what's your niche? How are you distinguishing yourself?

So higher ed is, as everybody knows, is extremely risk adverse. And I would say that working with a smaller firm could be perceived as being high risk, right? They want to work with kind of the established guard and Nobody gets in trouble for purchasing, you know, Microsoft or Intel or, you know, the big names, right? But I think that higher ed is really getting tired of the same cookie-cutter answers that other providers are giving them. And I also think a lot of the traditional analytics providers, they don't really want to focus on the brand differentiation for each school. They don't really want to understand what makes each university unique, because if you do that, you need a different unique solution for every customer. But big providers want to provide something scalable that every single school can use. Um, I think that's probably contributing to the issue in higher ed where everyone kind of follows the themes, follows the same patterns. But I think differentiation is what's going to set schools apart for the future, and they need someone who's going to be diving into that to help them achieve that.

Interesting, because I do see that even Mark Salisbury's TuitionFit, that is a nice boutique offering and really nobody has mastered that to scale. That's interesting. I hadn't thought of it that way.

Exactly.

So going to— and by the way, give us your website address.

Yep, we're at SightlineData.com. So there's a few Sightlines out there, unfortunately, but we're SightlineData.com.

And that's S-I-G-H-T-L-I-N-E?

Yep, that's correct.

Sightline data. Very good. And you've got some partners. Talk to us about what your partners, who your partners are, and kind of the plans that you want to share with us about what you may be doing with them in the future.

We started out at Sightline really focusing on serving the current needs of higher ed. And from that process, we've really learned how much we need to incorporate the students in those solutions as well and understanding their perspective and what their challenges are. So when we approach a company about a potential partnership, it's always, is this a student-centered solution? And that, you know, those are the types of people that we wanna be working from and learning from. We definitely wanna learn from our partners. So one of them, we, we have two that, that I kind of wanna talk about today, but one of them is Meadow and they are a net price calculator, a modern net price calculator. I think a lot of schools, have kind of shoved their net price calculator to the side. They're like, this is a requirement, we have to have this, but they're not really using it for its full potential or the purpose that it's intended for, which is, you know, to promote price transparency for students and helping them understand what they're going to be paying earlier. So we want to use it to inform students. It's not just a regulation and a box to check if we need to have this. There's real purpose for it, and it's to benefit students. So that's what I see Meadow doing. They're really focused on price transparency, which I think is important. As you—

I'll jump in with a question there, because I did go and look at the Meadow product. Does that let students compare tuition offerings from more than one college?

I would love to see more of that functionality. I think right now they have to go through the calculator at the different schools, but then they can add it to a view, I think, to compare those prices.

Okay.

So what's nice is that by having a calculator that's easier for the student to use and view it, they don't have to wait to get the financial aid letters. Also, a lot of net price calculators aren't that accurate. So Meadow does a lot of work to make sure they're accurate. So if a student can understand what they pay even before they apply, that's better because a lot of students completely eliminate schools just on published price at this point because it's— the published prices are exorbitant. They're not even going through the process of understanding what aid can I get here.

And then the other one you work with brings students together who are going to the same college. Talk to us about that one.

Yeah, Meet Your Class is a new company that we partnered with. They're really interesting because they were founded by students who are currently at the University of Michigan. So they're going to be seniors. So they're Gen Z, they speak the Gen Z language. I'm learning so much from them. It's a social media platform for prospective college students. It's actually how the founders met and became roommates. They, they started on these Instagram pages And then they were kind of, they were kind of realizing how valuable that was to them. And they've been able to create a better ecosystem for students to do that. So it's students are meeting their prospective classmates, but they can do it at different schools so that they're using it. We found that they're using it in the whole enrollment decision process of, can I find community here? 'Does this make sense for me?' And now the school can even see, are they, you know, without even looking at deposits, they can say, 'Are these students likely to come here? What other schools are they considering? How can we have a better conversation with students in a way that they want to communicate to?' Because it's through social media. So it's pretty interesting. I've learned a lot about the way Gen Z wants to talk, and it's not the way millennials or Gen X talk.

And do you find colleges, in your experience with meeting with Meet Your Class, are colleges understanding this new way for students to communicate? Are they able to leverage that to their advantage?

I think it's going to be a huge learning curve. Even for myself, I've had a lot of time with Meet Your Class. And so yesterday we had a conversation about their product roadmap and I asked them, are you going to be adding in an option for admissions counselors to like direct message students? And they're all kind of quiet and they're all, you know, I don't know, because right now the way the university can communicate with students on there is through— there's a resources page, the university can add those resources, and then of course posting different communications that you like you would on social media. And there's Reddit-style type boards as well. Students, you know, they wanna, they wanna be part of that Reddit type community. But I asked them, I was like, so how, how do you want to talk to a school? Like, do you want them to reach out to you? Do you want them to email you or direct message you? They're all kind of like, not really. No, they don't, they don't really want the one-on-one connection. Like they want to talk to their peers and maybe look at resources from the school, but they don't really want the school to reach out. But that's what schools do is they reach out individually, right?

Huh. And you know, this data entrepreneur thing in the Mitra class and Meadow, you know, I'll talk 2 or 3 or 4 years down the road, we'll look back and say these companies like yours and the others when they're talking about maybe even college viability are changing the market. We just don't know it yet. I think we'll look back and say that 2023, 2024, 2025 time period is really where this moneyball concept using data in all of its applications really started to change higher education, but it's so difficult to say it's working now. And one of the things I was talking with a board member earlier today, I said, my model, you know what my business model is? Persistence, persistence, persistence. Yeah, that's, that's, that's the only way to keep this kind of stuff going. I'm going to jump ahead a little bit, Ashley, and, and the FAFSA debacle is upon us. It's been upon us for the last year or so. And this is one of the questions I ask all of my guests. And if you would, just from your perspective and what you do at Sightline, what's the best-case scenario this fall and what's the worst-case scenario for this fall in light of the FAFSA debacle?

My sample size is probably a lot smaller than yours, so maybe you can, um, add some more high-level insight to this than I can. Um, but from the schools that I talk to, from my customers and prospective customers, I I see a lot of the smaller schools have handled this a little bit better than the larger schools because they've been better at the communications. They were able to handle one-off cases a lot better than the larger schools. They have so much volume to go through, and I saw the larger schools taking longer to get through the process actually than the smaller schools. Is that something that you've heard as well?

I have not heard that at all, but it makes perfect sense because my perception has been the larger schools might have had the resources to scale to a larger number of students. But boy, your, your comment makes, makes perfect sense. That'd be interesting to see. So, so the best case is does the smaller colleges survive?

I think it's, it's kind of like a net neutral for those smaller schools, probably continuing on trajectories that they were already on, but they might have been able to kind of scramble on the individual student basis for the smaller schools. Getting students in 1s and 2s sometimes makes the difference. So, you know, they might have managed that a little bit better. And as far as like scaling for the larger schools, I think there just wasn't much for them to be able to scale on. Like, sure, when they started getting data, that, you know, the ISIRs and FAFSA information, they could jump on that for sure. But gosh, there was no like catch-all solution to scale up, I feel like.

So— Well, that's, that's the best case. You know, we got to go the other end of the spectrum again. I'm just looking for your opinion, Ashley. What's the worst case?

I mean, worst case as far as short term for this cycle, I think a lot of especially the larger schools are going to struggle with the out-of-state students, especially a lot of students who look at public schools. They're making those decisions partly off of published price. Like those schools are low enough that they feel like I can potentially cover this out of pocket if I have to. If you start doing that with out of state, then the public price is higher. So I think that'll deter those funnels. I think, what is it? Deposits are down about like 10%.

That's right, Mary.

On average. So I would bet most of that's coming from out of state students. So those funnels could be diminished. And I think worst case is that this also just, accelerates the trajectories that we were already on. So that's like, that's bad in the short term, but it also, I think longer term, it's another, um, kind of fire that we needed to address bigger picture issues.

So, yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree. So actually, one of your, your market analysis services is evaluating college programs and majors, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, for growth or reduction. Elimination. Is, is that a market that you think will grow? And second part of that question, if so, will Sightline be able to earn part of that business?

It's, it's 100% growing. Whether it's something that we kind of continue to expand into, I'm not sure yet, but I think there's actually a lot of opportunity there. I think growth and reduction of programs gets a really, really bad rap. I don't think it's communicated very well from the school, and the media certainly doesn't talk about it very well. Um, I think, you know, for the schools that are prepared to evolve, this could be an opportunity. And kind of getting back to the differentiation, this could be the opportunity that schools need to differentiate. So as far as growing programs, which schools— which programs do you start and grow into? What is the reason for it? It's, it can't just be the, the bandaid of, oh, we're adding more online programs, which has appeared to be a bandaid, right? It has to be more driven by what is the purpose of this? Are there job opportunities? Are there employment, is there employment market growth in certain areas? So how do you justify the growth? And then same thing for the reduction. Let's focus more on the programs that you are specializing in. So it's more about a specialization differentiation conversation where, um, you know, there's a lot more value in certain programs than others. And then also when you look at the schools that are cutting programs, you go to their website, they have like how many— there's so many programs there. And so what, we're eliminating 10? There are probably— how many students were even in those programs? But that's the negativity that we're focusing on.

Yeah, that's what I said. Yeah, yeah, interesting. And on to the next topic. And this is one of the things I speak and write about with probably too much passion. And that is the 4- and 6-year undergraduate graduation rates. And in my mind, not in my mind, but the data shows they're abysmal. You know, fewer than half of the public and private colleges in the country graduate at least half of their students in 4 years. And I'm speculating, but it's reasonable speculation that colleges are admitting many unprepared and unqualified students just to collect tuition and fee revenue. Now, that's harsh. I know that. Is there a way, either what you do at Sightline or for somebody else to look at, is there a way to use data to help colleges improve their just awful graduation rates?

Definitely. I mean, this is— how do we step back and look at the student lifecycle holistically? I think a lot of leaders are just by design of the way the university is structured, university leaders, they make decisions in a silo and they're focusing on optimizing their own metrics. And oftentimes that conflicts with other leaders' metrics. So how do you find that balance? And so using data to look at the holistic view is important there.

And what about the individual characteristics of a student, you know, demographics? Is there a way to use demographic zip codes, whatever, and predict the likelihood of a student graduating in 4 years?

Definitely. So like, I think one of the challenges with a lot of the retention products that are out there right now is they're way too focused on really granular short-term information. So they're looking at, are you attending classes? Are you logging into your LMS? A lot of those things are really short-term, or they're— it's too late at that point, they're already missing classes. So how can we identify at-risk students a lot earlier? So this— one of the solutions that we use, you know, we're able to predict students that are likely to drop out a year ahead of time, and that is looking more at background information, financials. Are you employed? You know, your family income, your— unfortunately, like with the test score issue, it's harder to identify students who are underprepared academically. But there are other things to look at for bigger picture understanding of students and identifying them, them earlier. You know, but what's going to attract students to university is often very different than what is going to retain them. So Like you said, it sounds bad that we're, you know, we're letting students into a school because we're concerned about yield rates, or we're concerned about the growth of the school on the front end. We're not really thinking about long-term. That's obviously the worst outcome for the student. I don't think that's intentional from the university, but the incentives for different offices are different. I have an example. So, There's a, there's a, there's a school that I, that I worked with on one of these like more custom, uh, data projects, uh, that I talked about. And they have, um, they have a really great option for associate's degrees that you could also continue on to the 4-year degree. So you're going to have a much better opportunity of at least leaving with some sort of credential, even if you don't make it to the 4 years. And I think that's a really important thing to do. Um, they also had this general studies program. So if they're identifying students who are underprepared academically coming in, they were requiring them to start in this general studies program. But admissions didn't like that because when they talk to students, the student wants to be admitted directly into the 4-year program, even if they aren't quite prepared for it. But from like a marketing and admissions standpoint, that's what the student wants. So they got rid of the requirement of the general studies program. It still exists, so students can kind of opt in for that, but they weren't really requiring enough students to start there, which would have been better for them in the long run. But they want to appease students to get them in the door on the front end.

So, so let me do a follow-up on that one, Ashley. So let's, let's, you and I get together 10 years from today. Matter of fact, this is 6 months from Christmas, right? 10 years, 10 years today, we're going to be together 6 months from Christmas in 20— 34.

Yeah.

Well, the graduation rates have improved. Tough question, I know, but I just want your thoughts.

That is a tough question because I think, and you've talked about in your other podcasts, about consolidation of schools and the supply and demand issue. So theoretically, I mean, this, this could go a lot of different ways, but in the worst case scenario where we do lose a lot of, a lot more universities and there's a lot more closures, then maybe there are fewer school students going to school and they might be the higher academically prepared students. So in that case, it probably will be a lot better, but not necessarily for the reasons that we want, right?

Yeah, great point. Yeah, great. And I pondered that in the context of enrollment. I hadn't thought it through in the context of graduation, but it's the same logic. Fewer seats available, so the students that go might be more prepared than colleges. And I know it's harsh. You know, you might have heard some of my podcasts. I think the number I use of a college can't graduate 40%, crying out loud, 40% of its students in 4 years, they're not really a college. They're a tuition collection agency. And that's harsh, but I'm not sure that I'm wrong. Am I right or wrong with that?

I mean, it is a business. Universities are a business. And should people acknowledge that and start talking about it that way? But if you are going to operate as a business, you have to provide a good service. So what service are we providing and what's the value there?

Is the service just going to class, which doesn't get us much, or is the service that piece of paper that says I've got 120 credits or 60 credits, whatever, in whatever the degree major is? It's like selling me a car with 3 tires and no steering wheel.

Right, right. And I mean, the service should be an investment in your future, which again is a holistic view of what are you buying and what gets you there? What value are you going to receive from this? And how do we make sure that we get you to the end of that onto a good career?

Well, Ashley, clearly you've got a handle on the data piece and you've impressed me from the first time we chatted. And my final question really is, we've talked about Sightline as an example of one of many higher ed data entrepreneur boutique companies that are formed here recently. What do you expect in the next 3 to 5 years, maybe. What do you expect the impact of more data in whatever context and whatever source, more data will have on colleges, on their students, and maybe on the companies that hire college graduates?

Well, there's been a huge initiative to provide data to the universities. We've been through that. Universities have a ton of data. They don't really, they still don't really know what to do with it. Even with these big software systems where the data is aggregated, they're still just going through and saying, okay, what do I actually do? So a big volume of data isn't always helpful. And again, going back to some of those retention software products that are probably too granular, too invasive and too late, not super helpful, unfortunately. But I think the benefit of more data that I'm looking for, and I think solutions like College Viability, you know, is bringing about is the data transparency and I think making the difference for the families. I really liken it to the housing market pre-Zillow or pre-realtor.com where you were buying a house, but the buyer didn't really have enough information to understand, is this a good neighborhood? What are my comparables? Is this a good investment? So hopefully opening that up for the families and You know, how do we present that to families and get them in that process of understanding that this is an investment decision and they can potentially even negotiate price? Hopefully that's an evolution that we can see. And I think, you know, you've had a lot of conversations with parents, so hopefully we're hearing more of that coming out as well.

Well, Ashley, you know, Ashley Kern is one of the many, many impressive entrepreneurs, data entrepreneurs, data scientists, if you will, applying that old Moneyball concept from the Oakland A's back in the 1980s to higher education. Ashley, again, you're doing some really good work there. I look forward to continuing our conversations. Thanks for spending some time with us this afternoon, and let's make sure you and I stay in touch.

That sounds great. Thanks so much for having me, Gary.

My pleasure.