There are many benefits of technology in higher education. Artificial intelligence is an excellent place to begin. Universities and colleges are increasingly relying on algorithms to market to potential students, decide class sizes, and provide financial aid and infrastructure, particularly as they strive to retain students. Student assistance is a high-growth sector for AI applications due to the diversity of student-centric applications that result.
Machine learning is also used in school counseling. There are several programs available to assist students in preparing for their studies. Others, such as student advisors or career services departments, can use AI and support automation to help provide recommendations on courses, majors, and employment prospects—these systems leverage prior student performance to match students’ data profiles. For example, these types of tools may discourage students who struggle with chemistry from applying to medical school or suggest data visualization to an artist.
Another area where AI might be used is to give financial assistance to students in need. If students require more funds to remain enrolled, institutions may provide them with advance payments or microloans. Other options where institutions can apply AI and support automation, include:
Individualized education:
The use of AI and support automation in education has various advantages, one of which is the ability to customize learning. It is challenging to meet every students’ learning preference. Further, it helps instructors who work with students who have special needs or who are learning English as a second language.
All students must have equitable access to education and learning opportunities. One of the most distinguishing characteristics of AI is its capacity to adapt to individual students’ specific demands swiftly. Not to mention, students can benefit from customized and automated instruction targeted to their own strengths and weaknesses.
Restructuring national and global student recruiting:
College admissions officials can improve their efficiency by building algorithms that can anticipate which students will be admitted to their programs and from which countries and states. These algorithms might also be used to determine which grads and alumni are more likely to attend.
In addition, college admissions can become more efficient and suited to each student’s unique needs. To illustrate, universities and colleges can become better equipped to assist students when different administrative operations, such as visa processing, housing, and course registration, are automated.
More time to work on long-term initiatives:
The sustainability of any college or university is dependent on effective bookkeeping and cost management. Still, smaller institutions and community colleges generally face administrative and data silo challenges. Due to a lack of resources, many smaller financial institutions rely on manual procedures, wasting time and producing inefficiencies that limit their ability to analyze spending data and make strategic decisions.
In smaller institutions and community colleges, invoicing, travel expenditures, and other financial activities are increasingly reliant on paper-based and manual processes. If team members are constantly examining, scanning, and locating paper receipts, it’s no surprise that the paper process is both error-prone and inefficient.
Yet, support automation is helpful in that it eliminates all paper effort. To identify transactions, the barcodes on receipts are matched to the barcodes on invoices and expenditures. Data is then more accessible for proactive budget planning, and better vendor negotiations since reports for approvals and reimbursements are delivered quickly.
When you can consolidate all of your expense data in one location, it becomes easier to plan. Examining your travel, expenditure, and expense trend data may assist in eliminating much of the guesswork that comes with budgeting and planning, both short and long term. You might even be able to identify new approaches to fund your college’s activities.
Accounting, finance, financial assistance, and admissions are just a few examples of workflows with several procedures that are both vital and repetitive. Nonetheless, universities can reimagine how employees spend their time to fulfill institutional goals and retain top talent in a tight labor market by using AI and support automation.
Some of the routine duties carried out by employees may be automated to increase productivity. Invoices, for example, may take a long time to process in accounts payable, mainly if the work is performed manually. It makes sense to spend this time on other high-value tasks, such as financial analysis or business intelligence support.