Trust Begins With Leadership, Not Tech Solutions

It’s easy to treat AI as a technical decision. Choose the right platform, fine-tune a few settings, send out an internal memo about responsible use, and move on. But in enrollment, where technology shapes outreach, timing, and attention, AI is never just a tool. It’s a signal of what kind of institution you are.

And that signal begins with trust.

Students won’t see your data models. Counselors won’t read your training logs. But both will feel the effects of AI—whether they can explain them or not. If the system prioritizes the wrong students or fails to flag those who are drifting, the damage isn’t technical. It’s relational. And once trust breaks, it’s hard to rebuild.

The biggest mistake institutions make with AI is treating trust like something the technology needs to earn. It’s the other way around. Leaders earn trust by showing that any use of automation supports—not shortcuts—the mission.

That’s why the starting point for ethical AI in admissions isn’t the tech stack. It’s leadership.

Leadership defines what enrollment teams are optimizing for. It sets the expectations for transparency. It decides who understands how decisions are made and how feedback loops are built. If counselors can’t explain why a student shows up on their priority list, or if students feel like they’re being sorted without context, the problem isn’t the model. It’s the message around it.

Policies matter, but they can’t carry the weight of clarity on their own. What builds trust is consistency. Not just in how systems behave, but in how openly leaders explain what they’re doing and why.

That means being clear about what AI will and won’t do. It means telling your counselors how the system is surfacing students. It means letting teams see the signals behind the scores and the logic behind the lists. And it means creating space for questions—before there are problems.

On December 9, Emily Smith joins us for a year-end conversation on what ethical AI actually looks like in admissions. Not from a legal or technical standpoint, but from the place where it matters most: leadership. She’ll talk about how to build systems that reflect your values, not just your enrollment goals. And she’ll share how trust gets built in real-time decisions—not just long-term strategy.

This is not a conversation about compliance. It’s about responsibility. And it’s one every enrollment leader should be part of.

Join us Tuesday, December 9 at 2 ET for a live video podcast with Emily Smith: crowdcast.io/c/vpemily