Artificial intelligence already helps select future university students

No university manager in the world entertains the idea of ​​leaving the choice of his students in the hands of a machine, but more and more people consider artificial intelligence a very useful and objective tool to make a first sieve among the thousands. of people interested in entering the campus, as is increasingly the case in more and more personnel selection processes. According to a report by Infojobs, in Spain they used AI to recruit 5% of companies in 2023 and intended to apply it to another 11% soon. Then it is humans who make the final decision. In Spanish public universities, where the EVAU governs, it will not be used, but it will probably be used in the long run in private ones. EL PAÍS discussed this application of AI with university officials at the Reinventing Higher Education conference, convened by IE at the University of Miami, to which this newspaper was invited.

“The two areas with the greatest beneficial potential for AI are healthcare and education. So, trying to avoid it, prohibit it, etc., seems like a mistake to me,” underlines Mexican Julio Frenk, president of the University of Miami, which has launched a pilot program in admission tests. “We receive 50,000 applications and we have to choose approximately 8,000 or 9,000. “We want to predict who is going to be successful and, if these great language models can help us with the predictive capacity, it will be another input so that the committees that review can make better informed and fairer decisions for the students.”

The University of Miami asks candidates to submit their academic averages along with their application, write an essay and tell about their “life experiences.” “We are looking for elements that allow us to identify those who have known how to overcome adversity and that will continue to require flesh and blood humans, but it can be much more efficient [with AI] to filter many large volumes of applicants.” Frenk wants to clarify that his intention is not elitist: “It is of no use to us to accept someone and have them leave at the end of the first year because they couldn't handle the load. “It allows us to better focus our scholarships.”

Universities interested in this use have to define precisely what skills and competencies they consider essential to be their student, integrate an AI platform into the process and train a personalized algorithm so that it knows how to identify candidates who fit their objective criteria. . This is supposed to eliminate prejudices. In addition, with AI you can schedule interviews with candidates and keep them informed about the selection process. They could even be subjected to virtual interviews - this newspaper does not know that this is done in universities - and they would be analyzed automatically. The process has to be monitored and the stored data from hundreds of students marks very useful trends, patterns and areas for improvement.

David Garza, rector and executive president of the Mexican technological giant (TEC) of Monterrey, has not considered its use in admission because the “priority” has been the fit of AI in teaching. The TEC uses its own

bot

to resolve practical questions from university students and help teachers prepare their classes. But he is in favor: "It can help us synthesize the information, although the final decision of a process as sensitive as this should continue to be in the committees." The TEC calls for an admission exam and applicants must present a resume of merits and an essay. If there are doubts about their authorship, they demand a video. They fill 6,000 places with students taking their high school courses, but then they must choose another 6,000 students from among 18,000 applications.

Class in an IE University classroom, in its tower in Madrid.IE

Many universities in Singapore, a global powerhouse in AI research, use AI in recruitment. But this is not the case of the Singapore Management University, represented in Miami by its vice-rector for Research. Archan Misra explains that, if used, there would be a “kind of feedback loop”, so that students who responded to the same pattern of success would always be chosen. But this computer science professor relates another usefulness of language models: “We are contemplating the use of AI to suggest questions that the interviewer can ask the student in person. But it's still the interviewer's decision to say: I don't want to ask this question or maybe I'll ask a different question. “It’s just a tool, it’s not some kind of AI-based student ranking.”

At IE University, with offices in Madrid and Segovia, the process is especially complex, as they receive students from 160 countries. Their use of EI in admission is different. Santiago Íñiguez, its president, tells how they have developed an application with AI to help students choose a degree. “We have two mills that answer the questions they ask in a standard way to resolve their doubts and identify the career that best suits their profile.” Íñiguez considers that these devices help a lot “because they store all the information that has been generated from many other interviews with candidates and similar situations.”

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The IE “no longer gives as much weight to essays and motivational letters,” acknowledges Íñiguez. Neither do letters of recommendation. In all cases, AI may be behind it. He weighs his academic record, “a reflection of his career,” his results in the admission tests and the interview “which demonstrate his degree of maturity.” The IE has a ratio of 11 candidates per place in its degrees.

Ben Nelson, the controversial founder and president of Minerva – which boasts of being the most selective university in the world, more than Harvard, with 1% of admissions – worries that the use of AI in admissions will cause “false positives.” and negative.” That is why he asks that its use be tested a lot before being applied. “You have to be confident, but it can be useful.” His university, based in San Francisco, uses “many of its own and automated formulas” to evaluate the level of mathematics and language and the rest of the process is “manual.” About 25,000 people await their verdict each year.

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