AI Isn't Abstract Anymore: What's actually changing on campus?
August 10, 2026A year ago, AI conversations on campus sounded a lot like this: it’s going to change everything, we just don’t know how. Today, those conversations sound different. More specific. More grounded. More focused on what’s actually in front of people right now.
Don Smith, General Manager of the Integrated Payments business line at Illumia, has a front-row seat to that shift. A returning guest to The Higher Ed Geek Podcast, the takeaway Don kept coming back to: the higher education community is moving through the AI learning curve faster than most people expected, and the use cases are getting real.
The AI conversation on campus has grown up
Don has attended this conference for years. When he compares where campus administrators are today versus 12 months ago, the contrast is striking.
“The collective understanding of the campus administrators as it pertains to AI, generally speaking, seems to be much more sophisticated than it was last year. Last year you had some of the technology-forward folks on the campuses who were just naturally interested in AI, but they were the exception, not the rule.”
Now, those conversations are happening at every level. Administrators are using AI in their personal lives, asking more specific questions about enterprise use cases, and pushing vendors to show them the substance behind the promise. Don compared it to the early days of Google Search: a technology that started as a novelty, evolved through ubiquity, and eventually became infrastructure. AI is moving through that same arc, just faster.
A practical frame for where AI fits in your workflows
One of the most useful frameworks Don shared came from thinking about agentic AI, not as a futuristic concept, but as something you can map directly to work your team already does every day.
“Look at the workflow that your team is doing. Look at the components of that workflow that are repetitive, that are time intensive, that are labor intensive. Some of the elements that you would give to an entry-level member of your team, those are good potential use cases for the deployment of AI.”
That framing makes the otherwise abstract feel tangible. If you can picture handing a task to a new hire, you can picture handing it to an AI agent. The goal isn’t to replace judgment. It’s to free up the people with judgment so they can spend their time where it actually matters.
Technology’s real job: getting out of the way
Something one of the keynote speakers said at the conference stayed with Don, and he brought it into this conversation. The point was simple: the human touch is the special part. Everything else is infrastructure.
“There’s so much friction in our processes. There’s so much manual work. All we really want to do is connect with students, to help them or their parents to help them. The technology now can enable us to finally meet what the market has been wanting for a couple of decades: to really spend time on that human interaction.”
This shows up practically in the payments space. When a student is struggling financially, the last thing they need is an obstacle course of manual processes before they can talk to someone who can help. An AI-assisted workflow that surfaces the right information before the conversation, and routes the student to the right person at the right moment, is not replacing that human connection. It’s making it possible and more impactful.
Why digital wallets are a bellwether for institutional readiness
Don used digital wallets as a concrete example of how consumer expectations are reshaping campus technology decisions. Students already carry their boarding passes, event tickets, and driver’s licenses in their phones. They want their student ID there too.
“If [students] really like two different schools and one of them is sort of looking like it’s behind the curve in terms of adopting technology and the other one is at the forefront of that, that might sway [their] decision.”
The inverse matters just as much. Hitting a wall in a payment flow because a campus doesn’t support Apple Pay or Venmo isn’t just inconvenient. It’s a signal. Nobody wins when a student who wants to pay can’t. Not the institution or the student.
The advice Don gives higher ed leaders right now
Asked for his closing thought, Don didn’t hedge.
“Lean in. There’s so much change and it’s moving so quickly. It can seem intimidating, but it’s a tremendous opportunity to stretch, evolve, learn. Be adaptable. It’s okay that you’re going through pain during this process. But lean in. I think that’s a winning strategy.”
He also offered something more specific: use AI to educate yourself on the topics you’re navigating. Ask questions of people who know more than you. And don’t be afraid to say you don’t know. That, he said, is a sign of intelligence.
For a community that has spent decades managing complexity with too little time and too few resources, the technology is finally starting to catch up to the problems. The window is open. The advice from Don: walk through it.
Listen to the full conversation here or wherever you get your podcasts!
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