How enrolment taught me to build AI – before building AI taught me about enrolment
That’s why I began building AIDO, an international enrolment intelligence platform powered by trusted sources and AI.
As I built it, I realised something deeper. The very principles that make an AI platform powerful (context and memory) are the same ones that make an enrolment office successful. From two vantage points, I was solving the same problem: how to make sense of data and knowledge, and how to build continuity so a workflow can sustain its own memory, its own intelligence.
Context is everything
One of the first lessons from building AI is that raw data doesn’t get you far. You can have millions of points, but without context, they’re just noise. “Context engineering” is about helping the system find the right pieces of information for the job at hand — and ignoring the rest.
The same is true in enrolment. Dashboards can tell you “applications are down 10%,” but they can’t explain why. Was it affordability? Policy changes? A sudden visa backlog? Without context, leaders are left guessing. With it, they can see whether an issue is internal or external – and pivot strategy with confidence.
When a sudden crisis hits a region in Vietnam, context is the difference between assuming your year-over-year numbers collapsed due to weak outreach and recognising it was an external issue you couldn’t control.
Institutional memory: the forgotten advantage
The second principle is memory. Generally, in AI, memory keeps a system from starting over every time. It captures what’s been learned, so knowledge compounds instead of vanishing.
Enrolment offices face the same challenge. Staff turnover, retirements, and reorganisations erase years of institutional knowledge. A recruiter leaves, and with them goes the playbook for a region. A director retires, and lessons from past scholarship strategies vanish. The most significant risk isn’t just losing students — it’s losing memory.
Imagine if every insight, plan, and lesson were preserved in a shared, evolving record — not hidden in folders or siloed in one person’s head. An institution that remembers gets smarter over time; one that forgets repeats the same mistakes.
Most universities still rely heavily on one or two staff members to hold critical knowledge about their funnel or markets. When those people leave, so does the playbook. The challenge for every institution is this: how do you shift from a personality-driven model of intelligence to a system-driven one — where knowledge is shared, lessons are preserved, and every team member has access to the same context and clarity?
The AIDO approach
These principles are why we built AIDO. It gives enrolment teams what reports and CRMs can’t: answers with context and continuity.
With AIDO, you can ask questions in plain English — about your data or about global markets — and get transparent, cited intelligence instead of numbers in isolation. Its Insightsboard surfaces unusual funnel shifts and connects them to external drivers, while also keeping you updated on global news and trends tied back to your institution. A centralised travel planner helps maximise ROI from global fairs and tours, and a workspace preserves insights and strategies so knowledge isn’t lost with staff turnover.
And it’s not theoretical — AIDO is being refined with a cohort of early adopter universities to solve the real challenges enrolment teams face.
Clarity + continuity = leadership
Efficiency, risk management, and reducing guesswork are essential, but they’re now table stakes – every institution is chasing them. What truly sets leaders apart are the foundations behind those outcomes: clarity and continuity. With context providing clarity and memory ensuring continuity, institutions can improve efficiency, manage risks more confidently, and pivot strategies mid-cycle instead of reacting too late.
The future of international enrolment won’t be won by who collects the most data. It will be won by who can make sense of it — and by who can remember and build on what they’ve already learned.
So the question isn’t just what tools you have. It’s this: Does your office have the context to explain its data, and the memory to preserve its lessons? If not, that’s where the real work begins.
Efficiency will keep institutions afloat. But clarity and continuity will set them apart.
That’s not just where enrolment is headed. It’s where authentic enrolment leadership begins.
Learn more → www.meetaido.com
About the author: Rishab Malhotra is a former enrolment leader with 17 years of experience in higher education, most recently serving as associate vice president at the Illinois Institute of Technology. An AI enthusiast and problem solver at heart, he transitioned from campus leadership to entrepreneurship as the founder and CEO of AIDO.
Drawing on his firsthand experience with the challenges enrolment teams face, Rishab built AIDO to address the very issues he and his peers encountered, turning lived pain points into innovative, AI-powered solutions for international enrolment strategy.
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