States strike back
Also, spotlighting some AI startups who are having their moment
States strike back
Last Friday, 19 liberal-leaning states filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration. Their suit protests an April directive ordering states to dismantle their DEI efforts or face funding cuts. The Trump administration claims that DEI is non-compliant with civil rights laws; the 19 states argue that they are both compliant with the law and that their DEI efforts promote equal access to education.
The states do have some anecdotal evidence that supports their lawsuit. After the Supreme Court ended race-conscious college acceptance in 2023, Black and Hispanic enrollment in 2024–2025 both declined by 1% (from 7% to 6% and 14% to 13% respectively) (Source: New York Times).
Of the 59 colleges for which there was data, there was no commensurate increase in White or Asian enrollment on average (although there were outliers, like Middlebury, which saw their White enrollment increase by 10%). There was however, a rise in students who didn’t disclose their race.
Anyways, we’ll watch this lawsuit with interest. Judges in Maryland, DC, and New Hampshire have already postponed the Trump administration’s directives on DEI, largely on the basis that they have been too vague and are too difficult to interpret.
AI startups having their moment
Panorama acquires Class Companion, a two year-old startup which had raised from the OpenAI Startup Fund. Class Companion was initially focused on providing higher ed professors the ability to give AI-powered feedback to their students (or basically, for an AI to give feedback to students). Panorama is incorporating the tech in their Solara platform, an instructional platform for K–12. Panorama is interesting because they focus a lot on administrative tooling.
Kollegio just raised $2.8M in seed funding. It acts as a virtual college counselor, which is actually kind of brilliant given the funding crunch and long term college rnrollment declines in higher education. We say long term because 2023–2024 and 2024–2025 enrollment rates finally exceeded 2020 enrollment rates, but we also nearing the edge of the cliff.
Kollegio and Class Companion are emblematic of the speed-to-market that characterizes AI-native startups.
They’re easier to build, faster at shipping, quicker at raising money, and now–faster at hitting a liquidity event. They replace humans at a time when humans are too dang expensive! The crux of the problem though is that technologists want to replace everyone with AI–unless you’re blue collar, in which case they want to replace you with robots (remember our post, ‘Pizza making robots’?). The problem is that, for many of the jobs they want to replace (like teachers, counselors, coaches) human relationships are paramount. Knowing stuff and responding with accuracy and timeliness is just one component of those roles: Motivating people and building connections is more important.
Would a struggling college student benefit from a few sessions with an AI college counselor? Maybe. AI definitely helps distribute access, but as of yet, humans would still prefer to make connections with other humans.