Dr. Sven Schütt, CEO of the European university group IU Group (IUG), believes in lifelong learning and universally accessible education. IUG offers courses and degree programs in a variety of formats so that high school graduates and working adults can learn at their own pace and convenience. Founded in 2000, IUG, which currently has about 140,000 students enrolled worldwide, provides training, upskilling, and job certification across more than 250 degree programs and offers over 600 additional training programs. Schütt recently sat down with McKinsey partner Axel Domeyer to discuss how AI is transforming education—and his organization. An edited version of the conversation follows.
Axel Domeyer: Why is access to education so important right now?
Sven Schütt: It’s always been important, but there are three reasons it is particularly relevant now. First, we still see huge inequalities in education. For instance, if your parents went to university, it’s three times more likely you will as well than if your parents didn’t have any higher education certificate. Second, with the AI and digital transformations going on, we see fast changes in job roles and what people need to know and be able to do. And this requires learning. The third dimension is that education, when you look at it on a broader scale, is key to all solutions to the big challenges humankind faces, be it climate change, social equality, or democratization. We believe this is a pivotal moment for all educational institutions to live up to these challenges. That means reducing hurdles to education, personalizing it, and making it much more accessible.
Axel Domeyer: Let’s turn to the issue of upskilling working adults. We know from our own research that an estimated 12 million people in Europe could need to go through an occupational transition within the next decade, due to, for instance, the changes brought by artificial intelligence. What is IUG doing to make it easier for working adults to upskill and reskill?
Sven Schütt: There are a number of dimensions to personalizing education so that upskilling and reskilling programs are accessible and relevant for working adults. One is how we can tailor the learning around the learner so that every person can fit learning into all their other occupations and obligations as a working adult, which is a big challenge. We provide a flexible and broad model in terms of support—for example, we have an advanced AI tutor, called Syntea, that delivers personalized education at scale, and our data shows that it speeds up learning dramatically. In addition, we allow for both synchronous and asynchronous learning in all our courses; learners can choose their own exam date—in as little as an hour if need be—and learners can start and progress at their own pace.
The other dimension is providing the right content. It needs to be as future oriented as possible. And this is what we try to do with our portfolio. We have a large portfolio of AI degrees, as well as other kinds of nondegree programs that offer a wide variety of subjects to choose from. This year, most likely more than 3,000 students will start an AI study program with us. We also try to update our overall curriculum as fast as we can, so we’ve introduced AI content in all our offerings, with new topics like prompt design. We focus on the practical application of AI in tasks related to scientific work or tasks that students will later perform in their jobs. We can be flexible in the design and launch of programs, meaning that we can respond quickly to student needs for upskilling or reskilling and add to our portfolio of courses.
Axel Domeyer: Many in the education world are excited about the potential of generative AI [gen AI]. And you just mentioned your AI tutor, Syntea. How are you using it in your degree programs?
Sven Schütt: We launched our first AI learning companion before the gen AI revolution in a basic setup for only English-language degrees. And we expanded this over time to create a comprehensive, supportive AI companion that mimics a tutor. We know that personalized tutoring can improve learning outcomes by two standard deviations. Therefore, if an AI companion achieves the same level of effectiveness, you can more or less turn an average student into a top student. And you can also overcome many of the hurdles that students who are at risk of dropping out have along the way. Currently, we assume that people will be able to study at least 50 percent faster, if not twice as fast, with AI.
Axel Domeyer: Can you give us a few more examples of how you build AI into your offerings?
Sven Schütt: We offer AI-specific degrees where students learn to build AI models. However, we believe that students also need to be able to apply AI within their own area of domain knowledge. For example, we have created an artificial patient for our degree programs in the healthcare sector. We have also developed a setup where students can use AI in creative studies, such as designing ways to enhance their creative process. All our faculty members are trained in leveraging AI in education and they build their own models.
As a result, we now have several “mini bots” that are integrated into our AI learning companion to provide a personalized experience. Rather than focusing on specific AI capabilities, we try to incorporate AI into our portfolio as broadly as possible. The most cutting-edge thing we do is create multiagent setups that enhance the learning experience. We build agents that shape the learner’s journey, like a curriculum designer, a motivator, or a coach, so you can have a single companion, but we build multiple roles and support structures into this in a way that would not be financially feasible in real life.
Axel Domeyer: How do your students react to all this innovation?
Sven Schütt: We’re excited to see that the uptake is very high. Most students love using AI in various scenarios. However, we are aware that about 20 to 30 percent of students don’t use it yet.
Considering our commitment to accessibility, we’ve made AI use optional. But we’ve also set up a new school, the IU Copilot School, in collaboration with Microsoft, where we fully embrace the AI experience. Students know about this before they sign up, so we don’t exclude those who don’t want to use the technology. Instead, we offer an enhanced learning experience to the 50 percent or more who enjoy it.
Axel Domeyer: That sounds exciting. I’m considering going back to school and getting an AI copilot degree.
Sven Schütt: It’s a good idea. And when you think about the broader benefits to humanity, it’s significant. If we can reduce learning times by a third, we could potentially shorten the entire school and university experience by a third. That’s a huge gain in terms of formative learning. This opens up so many possibilities for younger and older people. I think it’s very exciting, but we still need to find out what that means from a societal perspective.
Axel Domeyer: How has AI affected IUG’s operating model?
Sven Schütt: We were lucky that we could start early and have access to talent based on the large number of our degree students. Several students who graduated with one of our AI degrees are now on our team. We now have a team of around 70 gen AI experts.
We leverage the best models available, depending on the use case. We also train our own models, such as for exam grading, which helps us a lot because grading is an important part of feedback on open-ended questions. One interesting finding is that using these models made our exam grading fairer than in a human setup. We compared our exam grading with human graders, and the standard deviation was lower, meaning that we took out some bias or variation between people. This can make education more accessible and fairer for everyone.
Axel Domeyer: As a former PhD teaching assistant, I can confidently say that no one will miss grading exams very much. How is the role of the teacher changing given the changes you’re bringing about through AI?
Sven Schütt: The role of teachers is changing in unprecedented ways. When we think about our own teaching and learning experiences and what’s happening in schools today, we realize that we need to rethink the value of lifelong-learning experiences. And we need to ask ourselves what this new technology can do better. People need a social learning context that the teacher can create and foster and promote, but other aspects of teaching, such as grading and personalizing the curriculum, can be greatly enhanced by AI. This is especially important for working adults who need flexible and personalized learning options.
This doesn’t mean that the traditional classroom social experience will disappear. But learning will happen more and more outside of this environment. The big challenge now is how teachers can cocreate learning experiences with AI, just like in other areas. Our faculty needs to learn how to interact with AI and use it to respond to specific student situations.
In the future, teachers will be more like social crafters than transmitters of knowledge. Based on what we know about our faculty, we believe this could be a more rewarding role for them, even though it’s a big change from the traditional model of lecturing in a large classroom. This is a significant disruption for them. Personally, I believe it’s for the better, but it will lead to a very different setup for cocreation with AI-driven learning companions.
Axel Domeyer: That’s interesting. You mentioned the social aspect of studying. What’s the difference here between young students—high school graduates who are getting their first degree and working—and lifelong learners? How do you think young people and working adults will learn in the future? Will there be a difference?
Sven Schütt: Young people adopt new technology faster than older people. We see this with high school kids, like my son, using gen AI apps to do their homework. About 75 percent of high school kids use it, while the penetration is lower among working adults. So younger people will feel more confident and accustomed to using technology in learning.
On the other hand, traditional education—where you go to school, university, and then start working—is a very important formative period for young people. There’s a social element of finding friends, making connections, and developing your own identity. AI companions can shape or support this, but in a different way. So there will definitely be differences.
Bridging the gap between formal and informal learning is key and will be something that is, again, enabled by this technology so that there is a smooth transition between learning and working. We’re integrating our AI learning companion into the Microsoft Office suite so that everyone has access to it. This way, informal-learning content can be easily accessed, and young people coming from school might start learning and working earlier, gaining more work experience. Learning accelerates, as we discussed, and they’ll enter the labor market with more relevant information.
Young people still need to reinvent themselves and find their perspective and path in society. This is also true for older people who need to reinvent themselves in this ever-changing world. Maybe they can be like kids for a bit longer and be more curious and thereby have a much more growth-minded way of living. Maybe this is now the moment that lifelong learning really kicks off and will make our society a much more curious and growth-minded place.
Axel Domeyer: That sounds like an inspiring perspective. All of this seems disruptive—the student experience, the teacher experience, the economics of higher education—everything is being affected. If you take the long view, what will our education system look like in the next ten to 15 years?
Sven Schütt: I believe that all of us will have learning companions, artificial learning companions, that know a lot about us. These companions will act like buddies—for example, reminding us what we need to learn—leaving us more time to focus on learning by helping us with repetitive and administrative tasks. They will accompany us along the way. In that sense, we will see formal and informal learning fusing. That doesn’t mean that formal educational institutions will disappear but that the two modes of learning will come together much more naturally than they do today.
At the same time, on a global scale, every person, no matter their background or where they live, could have access to an exceptional educational experience—which is currently far out of reach for many. And lastly, this will happen in a society where artificial general intelligence is a key part—we will constantly interact with artificial thoughts and companions, not only in education. Hopefully, this leads us to a more fulfilled life in which we develop the human curiosity that enables every person to strive in their careers in a faster-changing world. But this vision also goes beyond occupations to fostering the human drive to be curious and find out new things.
