AI Doesn't Need to Reinvent Higher Ed. It Just Needs to Show Up Where the System Can't.

Every year, the ASU+GSV Summit brings together thousands of education and technology leaders to wrestle with the same question: what's actually working? This year, I sat down with leaders from Salesforce, Google, and Colleague AI to discuss what happens when AI becomes invisible within the learning experience, and even more, how AI can practically transform education within the system in which it already exists.

After eight years of serving schools and institutions, including the California Community Colleges, the nation's largest higher-ed system, we’ve seen a clear pattern. The most useful AI in education is filling gaps that have existed for decades, quietly, inside a system that was never going to be rebuilt from scratch.

Does AI need to reinvent the classroom to be useful?

No, and that’s the point.

"We have this 400-year-old classroom model that we're still using. The structure of our education system is very similar to how it's always been. But with AI, we can meet that system where it is and plug in AI to fill in all of these gaps."

Schools aren’t going to wake up one morning with a completely new operating system. The lecture hall, the LMS, the registrar's office, the financial aid counter: these are the bones of the system. They're not going anywhere.

But every one of those structures has cracks. Gaps where students fall through because the system wasn't designed to catch them at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday, or during a panic about a lost scholarship, or when they're too embarrassed to raise their hand.

AI can fill those gaps, and on some campuses, it already is.

Where are students actually falling through the cracks?

In the moments when no one is around. At 7 a.m., when a student just found out they lost their financial aid and has five days to figure out how they're paying tuition. At 5:01 p.m., when a first-gen student needs help with FAFSA, and the financial aid office just closed. The night before a midterm, when a student can’t make sense of the new concept.

The gaps are predictable, and every faculty member has met all three of those students. Probably this week.

Chris Clark, Senior Director of Product at Salesforce, described a student who is "just about to seek help and then they back down. And then a third and a fourth time, they never ask for that help." He called it "a moment that's going to matter for that student for the rest of their lives."

Those moments happen in the space between deciding to ask a question and deciding to stay quiet. They're invisible to the institution, and they happen every single day.

"The intent [with Nectir AI] is to give them a place where they can go and ask all of the questions that they would normally be way too scared to raise their hand and ask, or even go into office hours and ask."

A course-specific AI assistant, embedded in the student's LMS, trained on the actual syllabus and materials for that class, is the kind of tool a student will actually open at midnight when they're panicking about an exam. And because it's grounded in the course content (not the open internet), the help they get is relevant to what their professor actually taught. That's how Nectir AI Assistants work across 100+ campuses right now.

What about the teacher's role?

It gets stronger, but only if the AI is built the right way.

Dr. Min Sun, Co-Founder and CEO at Colleague AI, raised a concern on the panel about the relationship between students and teachers. She talked about how educators still need to be able to say, "I still know what Johnny is struggling with. So I'm not just letting the AI grade and doing all the work, I’d lose track of my students' learning.”

This is the right question. And it's why the gap-filling framing matters so much.

When AI handles the 47th identical question about when the midterm is, the teacher gets that time back to actually talk to the student who's struggling. That's the trade. The repetitive volume gets absorbed, so the human relationship has room to breathe.

But that only works if the teacher can see what's happening. Faculty using Nectir get analytics on what students are asking and which topics are generating the most confusion. A professor who sees 40 students asking about the same concept the night before a test knows exactly what to address in the next lecture. That signal was invisible before.

"There should always be someone who is looking at the kinds of answers that they're getting, and that's a whole separate conversation of guardrails around AI."

The guardrails stay with the faculty. Instructors control how the AI responds: whether it gives direct answers or walks students through problems step by step, whether it refuses to write essays or generate assignment solutions. The teacher sets the boundaries. The AI operates within them.

Can schools actually move on this now?

Schools usually end up being the last place technology goes. The procurement cycles, the governance questions, the committee approvals. But the students sitting in those classrooms right now are the ones whose careers will be most shaped by AI.

“Those students in college whose jobs are actually gonna be replaced first by AI. So we need to give them that AI literacy as soon as possible... How do we package this in a way where schools can actually start using it tomorrow, not five years from now.”

This doesn't require a massive infrastructure overhaul. Nectir lives inside the LMS that a school already uses. Students don't download a new app or create a new login. They click into their course page, and the assistant is there. Most campuses go from signing to fully deployed in under two weeks.

The 400-year-old classroom is here to stay. The gaps are real, they're known, and we finally have tools that can fill them at the speed and scale that students actually need.

The job is to show up where the system falls short, before another semester passes without it.

Listen to our full session here:

Frequently asked questions about Nectir AI

What is Nectir AI? Nectir AI is AI infrastructure built for schools. It gives colleges, universities, and high schools the ability to deploy AI Assistants across their campus that are fully controlled by faculty and administrators, integrated with existing learning management systems, and compliant with FERPA and SOC 2 standards. Nectir is trusted by 80,000+ students across 100+ campuses, including a partnership with California Community Colleges, which serves 2.1 million students across 116+ campuses.

How does Nectir AI fill gaps in the existing classroom model? Nectir AI Assistants are built on each instructor's own course materials, so the help students get is specific to their class. Students can access support at any hour, ask questions they'd be too nervous to raise in a lecture hall, and get guidance grounded in their actual syllabus. Faculty retain full control over how the AI responds, what it will and won't answer, and how it teaches. The AI fills in the spaces where students need support and the institution can't be present, without changing the classroom structure itself.

Can Nectir AI work with my school's existing LMS? Yes. Nectir integrates with existing learning management systems, so schools can deploy AI infrastructure without overhauling their current tech stack. Faculty can build AI Assistants that reference their own course materials, syllabi, and rubrics within the platform they already use.

How can I learn more about Nectir?

Want to see what AI support looks like inside your school's existing LMS? Schedule a demo, and our team will walk you through how Nectir works and what it looks like at schools like yours.