Imagine, you have just graduated from high school and the world is your oyster. You are at that crucial crossroad where you have to decide the  career path you will pursue. Naturally, you will be looking for an answer that will give you a fulfilling life and help you realise your dreams. As a young person, chances are that your decision making may be influenced by your neighbour’s opinion, or your parents may push you for an engineering degree while your grandparents may convince you to pursue medicine as a noble profession, or your friends may be going to some management programme – enough reasons for you to attempt one of them though it may not be your preference. So many factors influence your decision – and the challenging part is, most of these choices may not be actually what you want, aspire, prefer and have a natural aptitude for!

Of course in the current scheme of things, we have career counsellors, aptitude tests, and case studies that may work well by and large – but nothing says that these are the best scientific approaches with required degree of accuracy. However, these methods rely on surveys and don’t account for the fact that many occupations are changing or disappearing as technology transforms the employment landscape. Therefore, these may be fine for the short term but have a limited scope for the long term future. The conventional guidance approach would be akin to asking directions for a location to the wayside locals – which may lead you to your desired destination or you may get lost or move around in circles. But today, thanks to the high precision GPS (Global Positioning System) we no longer face such geographical challenges as GPS is scientific, data-driven and real time.

Technology has always been at the forefront of human education. Every ten years, new information  has invaded our life and claimed to have changed the way teaching and learning transpires. Radio in 1960, Television in 1970, Computers in 1980, Internet in 1990, Mobiles in 2000, Augmented and Virtual Realities in 2010 and now Artificial Intelligence (AI) in 2020.

Technology’s importance is evident looking at the progressive journey of educational tools and methods as we walk towards a  future dominated by AI. As a technology, AI is a powerful tool that can support and transform education in many ways like developing instructional materials, identifying slow and fast learners, proctoring classes/examinations, helping assessments become better and personalizing education. It also has the potential to improve access, equity, collaboration and more importantly counselling etc. through a variety of interventions. It is for academic leaders and educational technologists to make best use of such emerging technologies for the benefit of our students. Undoubtedly, the synthesis of AI and human capabilities would be more than the sum of parts.

Higher education is opening up – students today have the facility of selecting their colleges, class timings, mode of delivery, mode of examinations and also subjects with several permutations and combinations from a large spectrum of disciplines. But sometimes, with great choice comes great confusion. As a result, they are likely to be more confused in choice-making or selecting the right path for the long term journey of their life.  Taking a cue from these challenges and the example of GPS as mentioned above, what if we have a similar type of mechanism for counselling called the “SPG” (Students Personal Guidance) system?  Development of such an AI-based system can be easy and a boon as it can have a lot of operational and functional similarities to that of a GPS and a student’s life can also be perceived as analogous to the journey guided by GPS.

A student entering into a diverse higher education space needs an accessible, easy-to-relate-to and trustworthy career planning resource at their disposal.  Students are not sufficiently aware of what goes on in a particular area and which academic majors are associated with their areas of interests. Undoubtedly,  SPG can help students choose the right paths, places and combinations that will provide the right foundation for their life goals. However, the main challenge in this effort would be in selecting key attributes and appropriate filters that can help in predicting the required guidance to meet customized  student goals. An AI based system like SPG can potentially generate proper guidelines because it can have the capacity to work out millions of permutations, combinations and amalgamations from its large database.

SPG system can be developed using Machine Learning (ML) algorithms like decision trees, artificial neural networks, graphic models, and techniques like Big Data, Natural Language Processing (NLP), image recognition, deep neural networks and time-series analysis. Moreover, SPG can help establish a trustworthy relationship with continuous guidance and course corrections, if required. By examining hobbies, interests and skills acquired, the system  can improve the accuracy of guidance. Further, to support these, robust datasets can be built continuously from several millions of students’ data from across the world to feed into the SPG’s decision making mechanism.

Finally, with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning influencing career counselling services, one may have to ponder over the requirements for human intervention in the highly automated process. But it can be said that the intersection of advanced technological tools like SPG and human thought is where career counselling would thrive. Leveraging this synergy, we can revolutionize career counselling services and empower future generations to lead a fulfilling life and career.

Sandeep Sancheti

Professor Sandeep Sancheti is the Vice Chancellor (Provost) at Marwadi University Rajkot. In his previous roles, he has served as the President of Association of Indian Universities (AIU), New Delhi. He has also worked as Director at National Institute of Technology, New Delhi and NITK Surathkal.