focusEDU – People as Higher Ed Consultants, NOT AI

2025-08-10

People As Consultants, NOT AI

I just finished reading an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal this morning about the largest and oldest consulting firm. They were rapidly moving toward transitioning many of their people consultants for their corporate level. So, they were moving to a hybrid mix of people and a heavy reliance on artificial intelligence. Consequently, this was to speed up routine corporate level consulting work. Correspondingly, they plan cut their people staff by 5,000 jobs. However, will their clients receive the same quality of consulting work from AI? Or, can a professional human consultant assessing and recommending optimum processes and functions be more effective? What about long-term strategic planning? I do not have an answer for those questions.

focusEDU Uses Professional People Consultants

I do know that AI has been a discussion topic for the business model and services of focusEDU. There was unanimous support for our people consultants providing our services and partnering with the leadership of higher education. There is no doubt that each institution we work with has organizational “fits” and cultures unique to their particular institution. focusEDU will continue to assist the leadership of our client institutions.

focusEDU’s Commitment

We’ll do this with interim placements, assessment and evaluation consulting, applicant assessments from our national search services from the team at focusEDU. We did run through a talking simulation of AI for such services and the logic AI would need to provide for quality services in our areas of expertise. The design logic (at this time) of AI cannot replace people intervention and our ability to partner and communicate with people at your institution.

focusEDU Partners and Communicates with You

This short article is just to let you know that focusEDU will still be continuing to use our people consultants. We will work with you to provide quality and personalized consulting services for the unique culture and needed “fit” of those functions at your institution.