Build vs. Buy vs. “Build on a Base”: The Third Way for Campus AI

Most institutions are weighing the same two paths for generative AI:

• Buy a per-seat SaaS assistant and accept the lock-in

• Build a bespoke solution and accept the timeline, risk, and maintenance

There’s a third, more pragmatic option:

• Build on a base — adopt a campus-owned AI platform (code + APIs + SDKs) that installs in your environment and lets your teams ship many agentic apps quickly, safely, and at developer prices, like mentorAI by ibl.ai.

Below is a practical framework to decide—and a concrete picture of what “the base” looks like in higher ed.

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Why “Buy” Breaks Down

Buying a closed, per-seat AI product can be fast to pilot, but campuses hit the same walls:

• Lock-in and limited control. You inherit someone else’s roadmap, constraints, and prompts.

• Data governance friction. Syncing SIS/LMS data to an external SaaS for meaningful personalization triggers security, FERPA, and residency hurdles.

• Blunt economics. User-per-month pricing stacks up quickly; you can’t route requests to the most cost-effective model for the task.

• Shallow context. Without first-party student and course context, assistants stay generic—and outcomes are hard to measure.

Why “Build” Stalls Out

Custom builds sound empowering—until you inventory what’s actually required:

• A secure, multi-tenant backend (auth, roles, tenancy, audit trails).

• LTI integration and LMS embedding (Canvas, Brightspace, Blackboard).

• A Memory layer for structured, persistent student context (program, enrolled courses, progress cues, supports).

• Additive safety (pre- and post-generation checks), disclaimers, and domain scoping.

• Cost controls & analytics (model routing, cost per session, topic trends, learning signals).

• Unified access to multiple LLMs and tools (model swapping without rewriting apps).

Teams often end up rewriting the same “plumbing” instead of delivering value to learners.

The Third Way: Build on a Base

mentorAI by ibl.ai is designed as that base: a campus-owned platform you deploy on-prem or in your cloud with campus-owned code and data. You get a unified API and SDKs (Web + Python) so academic and IT teams can spin up agentic apps—mentors for tutoring, advising, student services workflows, even prospective-student assistants—without reinventing infrastructure.

What’s In The Base

Unified API + SDKs

• Web SDK: drop mentors into your apps and LMS UIs via LTI.

• Python SDK: build services, workflows, batch tasks.

• Programmatic model routing (OpenAI, Gemini, others), tool use, and guardrails.

Memory (Context That Matters)

• Structured, persistent student profile: major, enrolled courses, progress cues, preferences/supports.

• Lives with your deployment; seeded from SIS/LMS; responsibly referenced by mentors.

Additive Safety & Governance

• Pre-request moderator + post-output checker, domain scoping, course-bounded answers.

• Disclaimers and consent flows. Full auditability.

LMS-Native Delivery (LTI)

• Provisioning, grading integrations, and an embedded mentor sidebar so help appears in context (“Why is this war important?” → course-aware answer).

Embedded Analytics

• Engagement (who/when), topic coverage (what), conversation quality signals (how), and cost by model/provider—all tied to cohorts and courses.

Economics You Control

• Use developer-rate inference (per-token) instead of $/seat.

• Route tasks to the right model for cost/performance.

• Typical campus math moves from multi-million per-year seat licenses to low six figures for the platform, plus usage you can optimize.

How It Feels to Ship on a Base

Week 1–2: Quick Wins

• Launch a prospective-student mentor on your .edu site, scoped to admissions content.

• Embed a course mentor in your LMS, grounded in faculty notes with citations.

Week 3–6: Expand Responsibly

• Add a student-services workflow (e.g., transcript/GPA checks) with human-in-the-loop approval.

• Seed Memory from SIS/LMS for selected cohorts to personalize help while staying in-bounds.

Weeks 6–12: Operate Like A Platform

• Introduce analytics reviews with faculty: topic spikes, confusion patterns, representative transcripts, cost per outcome.

• Stand up a small front-end factory: speedy, safe app creation against the same backend, not one-off tools.

What You Gain vs. Buy or Build

• Speed without sprawl. One backend, many frontends; standardize auth, tenancy, safety, and analytics once.

• Personalization that actually works. Mentors are course-aware and student-aware via Memory.

• Governance by design. Code + data in your environment, with additive safety and clean audit trails.

• Measurable outcomes. First-party analytics connect engagement, topics, quality, and cost to course outcomes.

• Durable flexibility. As LLMs get cheaper and smarter, you swap models—not platforms.

How the Stack Fits Together (Plain English)

1) Campus Sources (Authoritative Data)

• SIS, LMS, file stores, knowledge bases.

• Role: the facts—who the learner is, what course they’re in, what materials exist.

• Where it lives: your cloud/on-prem.

2) Memory & Telemetry (First-Party)

• A small, structured profile + event stream: major, roster, progress cues, preferences; plus session/topic/cost analytics.

• Role: gives mentors context and gives you evidence.

• Where it lives: your environment, retention you control.

3) mentorAI Base (Unified API + Controls)

• Orchestration, safety guardrails, model routing, RAG connectors, and built-in analytics.

• Role: the “operating layer” that turns your data into course-aware, policy-safe mentors.

• Where it lives: on-prem or in your cloud; campus-owned code and data.

4) Channels (Where Learners Meet the Mentor)

• LMS via LTI sidebar, web, mobile, site embeds.

• Role: meet students and staff in the tools they already use.

5) Models & Tools (Swappable Providers)

• OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, etc., plus code-interpreter, vision, speech.

• Role: the reasoning engines and utilities—easy to swap as cost/perf changes.

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Conclusion: Choose Leverage

Buying locks you in. Building buries you in plumbing. Building on a base gives your teams leverage: campus-owned code and data, LMS-native delivery, real safety, and the freedom to route requests across models at developer prices—so you can focus on outcomes, not infrastructure. If you’d like to explore how mentorAI can become your base and help you ship course-aware, student-aware agents fast, visit https://ibl.ai/contact to learn more.