872: LIVE From Ellucian Live 2024 - with Isaac Segal, Founder, EduNav & Senior Advisor, Ellucian, & Amy Gaines, VP, Strategic Initiatives, Ellucian

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Welcome back everybody. It's your time to up on the EdUp Experience podcast where we make education your business. This is Dr. Joe Sallustio with my 11th episode recorded. This will be number 11 of the day here on day three at Ellucian Live 2024 in San Antonio, Texas. It has been filled with amazing conversation, amazing guests that have come and sat in the chairs around our podcast setup. On my right, obviously not right at this moment, we had EdUp Español going and Adriana, one of the hosts of EdUp Español did six episodes in Spanish today. So we had a lot of people here podcasting talking about what's happening in and around higher education. 

What we're here to talk about right now is an acquisition that happened. Ellucian acquired a company. We've got a senior advisor here now. We're going to talk about how this whole thing opened up. Let's bring them in one at a time.

He is Isaac Segal, the founder of Edunav and now senior advisor at Ellucian. What's going on, Isaac? How are you?

Isaac Segal: Everything is great. Everything is great.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: We're going to talk about Edunav in a minute, but we want to bring our second guest in. Here she is. She's Amy Gaines. I like that name. Amy Gaines, VP of Strategic Initiatives at Ellucian, Amy on her first podcast episode. Thank you for joining us. How are you?

Amy Gaines: Thank you for having us. I'm great.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: This is my button I use for any question that I ask. I am the smartest man alive. But that's my button. That's just my button. I've got buttons for everything. 

Isaac, why don't you start telling us about Edunav? What is it? How does it work? And let's start there. Let's go there. Tell us about Edunav.

Isaac Segal: So Edunav is helping students complete their education in the most optimal way. And that's easier said than done. When you look at what students need to do in order to get a degree, they need to meet very complex academic requirements. That's for sure. Pretty complex scheduling and a vast catalog with some courses not available in a given semester. As a result of all of that, students take six years on average to complete and make a lot of mistakes along the way. So they end up with much more than the 120 credits.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Right, more credits than the 120, more debt, more money owed to the government. They still possibly come out with a degree, but with way more credits than they need. And that's because sometimes the classes aren't available. So you take this class that wasn't relevant, so on and so forth, right? That's a big problem.

Isaac Segal: Yes. So what Edunav did, we invested over 200 engineering years in pulling out of the degree audit systems all the very complex academic requirements. It's actually codifying a computer language. We had one customer with 300,000 lines of code defining the requirements. And then we make sense of all of that and use combinatorial algorithms to plan all the way to completion.

We plan that is optimal, doable, meaning you have classes that the student can actually take in the given semester and in their schedule, all the way to the end in a way that's passed audit, meaning the registrar will give them a degree, and make their advisor happy because those are good courses to take along the way.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: This is, what kind of algorithm did you say? A what algorithm?

Isaac Segal: Combinatorial algorithm.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: I mean, you know, I don't know what that means in like normal people language.

Isaac Segal: I would say this is probably the most complex area in higher education technology. I'll give an example. A typical student looks on the website and sees "take two courses out of five." When you look at the actual requirements that are codified in, for example, Ellucian Degree Works, you'll find 1,000 lines. Why? If you are an athlete, it's a little bit different. If you transfer from another school, you got a course articulated that is not in the public catalog. It's a hidden course, but it also satisfies this requirement and I can give you many, many more examples.

Because there's so many different student types, there's so many different journeys, have international students, domestic students, you have domestic international students, you have athletes, you have NCAA athletes, you have transfer portal, you have just regular normal transfer students. Degree audit, getting transfer credits evaluated, all those types of things are very complicated and it shouldn't be.

So now I'm getting to the word combinatorial. When you have billions of combinations and you need to find that one great one, you use computer science type of algorithms called combinatorial algorithms. They are dealing with finding a solution in a very complex area that satisfies requirements, satisfies the student's constraints, satisfies the advisor best practices, and is doable. And that's, combinatorial algorithms is a set of algorithms for finding solutions to such complex problems.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Amazing! I love it. And I think that's why Ellucian came and said, Edunav looks like a really amazing addition to the suite of products. Can you talk about the strategic initiatives that they like this tie in? Why was this important to Ellucian to talk to Isaac and acquire Edunav?

Amy Gaines: Absolutely. So we started having conversations with the Edunav team last fall and when they showed us what they've done and the problems that they're solving, we said, hey, this is really interesting and we actually have something to solve some of those same problems on our roadmap. But you all have done them in such a way that is gaining really good market traction, have very happy customers. And you have done it in such a way that integrates well with our products and others that are in use across the market.

This would give us an opportunity to accelerate bringing the really critical functionality of how does a student get to the outcome that they're trying to in the best possible path for them with an awareness of, if I make a change, it's going to delay me potentially. It's going to add money to my time. It's going to add potentially to my debt. That, what they've done and where they were with it and the state of readiness to bring to many more customers, was very attractive to us. Then we could get it in the hands of our customers much faster.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Are we talking about degree progress audits or DPAs or like what? Pathway to degree? I mean is that really what for thus our administrative heads in higher education is that the way we should understand it?

Isaac Segal: I can be really literal. Think about it as which classes to take in the semesters where a schedule was published and which courses to take after that all the way to completion. As the institution publishes schedule or changes are happening, course gets filled. This recalculates.

You know that you use Google when you drive somewhere. And if there is an accident, it's recalculating and maybe taking you through a completely different way. The same thing will happen here. So let's say a course gets filled. Edunav immediately recalculates and may even replace the courses, not just the classes. Because that's now the most optimal way to finish your degree.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Epic. It's almost kind of choose your own adventure, of, right? If you choose this class, your pathway or this course, your pathway might change, right? If you choose this course, your pathway might go here. You have to see it, right? Because you could take a course and unknowingly take something that's not gonna be relevant to satisfy your degree requirements. And that's where, if you actually think about that, from a consumer perspective, there aren't many industries where you can buy something that's not relevant to completing something. Only in higher ed do these problems exist, right? And it's because of our systems, our technology, the way, the complex nature of degrees. 

This partnership with Ellucian and this acquisition, why Ellucian? Why was the time right for you?

Isaac Segal: So I will answer the question, but first I will tell you that the student interacts with it because the student preferences are also important. But if they make a choice, let's say take a course because their friends are taking it, we tell them the implications before they commit. Okay, so if you do this with your friends, you're going to be taking credits you don't need. And you're going to stay another semester and it's going to cost you another $15,000. All of that comes out at you before you actually register to the course.

And why Ellucian? Why now? So even when we founded it, I was thinking that Ellucian will be the best acquirer. And I'll explain why. Startups' role, many times, is to experiment with new ideas in a very agile way. But then you get to the point, do I build a whole sales force? Or do I connect with a company that already built that sales force and can bring it to reach the market? And we knew from day one that Ellucian will be the best acquirer to bring it to the market once it's proven.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: And Amy, you know, culture partnerships, acquisitions, there's always a cultural piece. You got to have the right partners. Why was this right for Ellucian?

Amy Gaines: I love this question. So when we started talking with Isaac and the Edunav team, there were a couple of things that were really apparent. They were very specifically focused on solving a really critical problem in higher ed and not interested in chasing other things that might look cool but not actually get them to solving that problem. And so their very specific focus on serving higher ed well was a really attractive cultural dynamic.

They're also great to work with and they had good collaboration amongst themselves. We had good dynamics in our initial conversations. I think we worked quite well together through the various phases of acquisition. And so it was just evident that both the reason they were working and the way that they were pulling that reason through their work, as well as just the interpersonal dynamics were a great fit.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Pull the hood back for us and show us underneath. Soup to nuts. Is this a year-long acquisition, a six-month acquisition, three-month acquisition? How did it work timeline wise?

Amy Gaines: We started talking in October, I believe. We had very first conversations and we were very interested very quickly, both sides. And so we moved really quickly through the non-public side of acquisitions really through the December and January timeframe and then entered diligence in early this year. And then we officially closed and were able to announce right at the beginning of March. So it was about a six month, maybe a little bit less, soup to nuts cycle. And obviously that is not the end of an acquisition, right? What happens next?

So we have team members that have been demoing SmartPlan and Summit, and they had lots of good interest over the course of the last couple of days. And so we're just looking at the whole organization, where does everybody live long term, what are we going to, how does this fit into, with greater detail, how does this fit into our roadmap.

At a macro level, what are we able to do now, even at a deeper integration with the products themselves, that sort of thing. So that will certainly take an additional, I would assume, six to nine, maybe even 12 months, but that's what we're working on now.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: And does Edunav maintain its separateness? Is it still going to be called Edunav? Will it eventually be integrated?

Amy Gaines: We are working across the Ellucian portfolio as a whole to really drive some clear naming around the function that the naming convention is important. So it's very important. And so we are certainly for sure looking at the SmartPlan and Summit names of the products. And then I think we'll figure out as we get a little bit further in how we pull those into the overall naming taxonomy within Ellucian.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: And now as the strategic advisor, Isaac, you've got to be able to help provide the direction on what happens with this product, how it integrates, how it evolves?

Isaac Segal: So I would comment that this acquisition is one plus one equals three. So don't think about it as two independent products because they can actually enrich each other. And maybe I'll give a specific example. So the DegreeWorks and it doesn't mean that Ellucian will do that specific work. DegreeWorks is a system that you codify academic requirements. You use something very similar to computer language. Edunav is creating a visual plan.

So even for the person that puts in the computer language, that put the code in, if they can see the view, the visual view, it can help them debug the code. So I'm giving you an example how Edunav can enrich other Ellucian products and vice versa. So there is synergy beyond separate products.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Are you a mathematician or an engineer?

Isaac Segal: Yes.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Yeah, I know because I told you how many I did in the number of minutes that I did and you turn it into hours and I felt better about just saying I did 11 20-minute podcasts and you said that's like five hours of... I was like, oh yeah, it was. So I could see how fast your brain's moving with numbers. This is an important part right of coding and you know making all there's so many bits and courses and lines and items that you've got to keep track of to make something like this work.

Isaac Segal: I would say a little bit different. Estimation is really important, estimation. And it's important also when you do business, not just engineering. It's about seeing the bigger picture and quickly getting an estimation. I don't know exactly how many hours you spent.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: You didn't know, you did the math here. Don't mess around. You knew exactly how many. What a pleasure to have you guys here and hear about this acquisition as Ellucian continues to move forward and trailblazing the industry and higher ed. Create a product set that users are going to be able to go to. This is an important part, right? Degree progress, audits, being able to understand exactly how many credits I need to graduate without burdening the student with debt, which hurts institutions. It doesn't help with Title IV compliance. There's so many reasons. You look at default rates. There's so many reasons for this to exist. What a great acquisition by Ellucian, Amy.

Amy Gaines: Really excited. We've been excited from day one. I personally have been excited from day one. We've all been very excited from day one. But to your point, if you think about one place where you can really have perhaps even an outsized impact on a number of the other problems that you just walked through. It's in making sure the student knows the right class to register for at the right time. And then makes that forward progression. And it's an excellent addition to our product portfolio to be able to provide something that answers that question in a very succinct, straightforward, clear way for the student.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Congratulations, you guys. Anything else you want to say, Isaac, to take us out?

Isaac Segal: No.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: All right. Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you everyone. I'm trying to change my outro. Elvin's got me changing my outro and it's making me mess up. Thank you everyone. I have Isaac and I have Amy and we talked about Edunav and Ellucian and their acquisition of Edunav. Thank you guys for being on the podcast today. I really appreciate it.

Amy Gaines: Thank you for having us.

Dr. Joe Sallustio: Remember everybody. Be excellent to each other. You've just ed-uped.