By Michelle Mott, Consultant, Innovative Credentials Project Manager, AACRAO
AI is rapidly becoming part of everyday operations across higher education. The AACRAO Technology Advisory Council is convening practitioners and experts in a working group to help the profession evaluate, govern, and implement AI-enabled solutions responsibly. The open call for AI Working Group volunteer members runs August 17 – September 4 on the AACRAO exchange.
AI-enabled tools are already touching the student lifecycle: from recruitment and admissions to registration, records, transcript evaluation, communications, compliance, and reporting.
The opportunities are significant. It requires thoughtful decisions about where AI adds value, where human judgment must remain central, and how institutions approach governance, procurement, data, privacy, and interoperability.
That is where AACRAO seeks to assist its members and where members have an important role to play.
Why This Work Matters Now
AI is increasingly being built into systems that use student data and systems. Examples include new releases of SIS platforms, workflow support, recruiting campaigns, course and room scheduling, and much more. In addition, emerging state Learning and Employment Record initiatives and AI-powered talent marketplaces are examples. These systems may use skills records rooted in education data to connect students with employers, raising important questions about privacy, consent, data ownership, and institutional responsibility.
These are not simply compliance questions. They point to a larger challenge facing institutions:
How do we design AI-enabled systems that are useful, trustworthy, transparent, and aligned with the responsibilities of institutions and our profession?
A Practical Agenda: Questions the Profession Is Already Asking
The AI working group will focus on the practical questions institutions are already confronting as AI moves into enrollment, student records, and institutional technology. Its work will span the landscape, use cases, governance, procurement, interoperability, and professional development needed to help institutions make informed decisions and translate emerging lessons into practice.
That work will include questions such as:
- Where is AI creating value and where is it creating risk? What applications show the greatest promise across enrollment, admissions, records, registration, transcripts, communications, compliance, and reporting?
- What records are being created? AI can generate information continuously, including through “invisible” uses embedded in scheduling, recruiting, analytics, and student engagement. What does that mean for records management and institutional responsibility?
- Where does human judgment belong? Which workflows are appropriate for automation, and which require meaningful human review and oversight?
- Can institutions trust the output? How should institutions approach transparency, explainability, bias, administrative or process drift, and accountability when AI informs an operational decision?
- How should vendors and products be evaluated? What should institutions ask about data use, model training, security, explainability, interoperability, agentic capabilities, and ongoing oversight?
- What does good governance look like? How can institutions establish collaborative oversight groups, clear roles, escalation pathways, and accountability without creating unnecessary barriers to innovation?
- What does AI mean for the infrastructure itself? As emerging agentic systems change how data moves across institutional systems, how will standards, interoperability, transcript exchange, and student records infrastructure need to evolve?
- What can AACRAO help institutions do next? The working group will translate what institutions are learning into practical guidance, tools, webinars, conference presentations, articles, and other member resources.
The goal is not simply to catalog what AI can do. It is to help the profession understand where AI belongs, what guardrails are needed, and how institutions can adopt it in ways that are useful, trustworthy, and aligned with their responsibilities to students.
A Member-Driven Effort
The AI working group will bring together ATAC representatives, registrar and enrollment practitioners, and external AI and interoperability advisors. The goal is straightforward: ground the work in real institutional experience and produce resources members can actually use.
Whether your institution is already deploying AI, evaluating vendors, developing governance policies, or still figuring out where to begin, your perspective matters.
Complete Our Survey and Join the Conversation
AACRAO members can respond to the open call August 17 through September 4 via AACRAO Exchange. Working group meetings are expected to begin in late September.
AACRAO is also gathering member input through a brief survey. Complete the survey and tell us what you are seeing, what questions you are facing, and where you need guidance.
AI is already changing how institutions work. The opportunity now is to help shape how that change happens.
Learn more and respond to the open call on the AACRAO Exchange, August 17–September 4.
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