Question 1

Is Clema a replacement for Edify?

Accepted Answer

No, not directly. Edify is a data platform that includes a warehouse, governance, and AI assistants. Clema is an AI assistant that sits on top of existing institutional data. If you need to build or replace the data platform, Edify is in that conversation. If you have the data and need answers from it, Clema is.

Question 2

Can Clema sit on top of an Edify warehouse?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Clema reads from any warehouse the IR team has SQL access to. An institution running Edify as its data foundation can still use Clema as the IR-facing question-answering layer. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Question 3

How does Clema handle data privacy compared to EAB's higher-ed model?

Accepted Answer

Clema uses partner-only models. Your data trains your model and does not flow into a shared cross-school system. Edify is sold partly on the strength of its higher-ed data model and pre-built accelerators, which benefit from shared structure across institutions. Both postures are valid. Many IR teams prefer the partner-only choice.

Question 4

What does a Clema pilot actually look like?

Accepted Answer

Connect a single dataset (often the SIS or a warehouse extract), define two or three real IR questions the team wants answered, and run Clema against them. The pilot is measured in days, not quarters. No campus-wide procurement, no enterprise rollout, no committee.

Question 5

Does Clema have predictive analytics like EAB Rapid Insight?

Accepted Answer

Yes, built in. Clema runs gradient-boosted retention, graduation, yield, and program-margin models on the institution's data, with SHAP-backed explanations for each per-student prediction. EAB sells Rapid Insight as a separate product alongside Edify. The capability is comparable in scope; the packaging is different.

Question 6

How do the costs really compare?

Accepted Answer

EAB does not publish Edify pricing, but public records give a clear picture. A public university task-force report disclosed an Edify fee schedule running $36,000 to $216,000 per year, plus professional service hours billed at $250 to $325 per hour beyond the contracted block. That same university's five-year Edify contract totaled over $914,000, about $220,000 per year. EAB has since moved to enrollment-based pricing. Clema starts at $499 per month, about $6,000 per year, with published pricing and no implementation fee. The two are not like-for-like (Edify includes warehouse and governance Clema does not replace), but the order-of-magnitude gap is real.