Education and AI are skipping hand-in-steely-claw toward either a wide-open utopian field of better, faster-informed students, or a hellish landscape of monotone slop masquerading as original academic thought.
A slew of universities, including my own, are touting AI being implemented into educational tools as a techno-revelation, poised to democratize the field and empower students and educators alike.
If you or your kids are heading into the final couple years of high school, or you’re exploring further education options later in life, these AI tools can be massively useful for prospective students burdened with balancing evolving concerns around cost, prestige, political climate and the ultimate value of an education.
Here’s how you can use AI to find the school that’s best for you as you embark on the process of making a potentially life-changing decision about where to do your learning. Just be sure you double-check everything with each college’s official website before you apply, in case AI hallucinated info about your desired course or school.
Degree programs and class offerings
According to a recruiter I asked at the college where I’m a professor, deciding on what to study is one of the first things a prospective student should do before diving into applications.
AI tools can comb through the often dense and dizzying materials associated with course catalogs, degree program requirements, outcomes and classes at multiple schools.
Claude, an AI engine developed by Anthropic, gave me a useful top-level breakdown of programs in my chosen speciality, woodworking and furniture design, and helped me narrow the search to a school with more specific courses in that field of study.
Trade school, community college or research institution
You might not be looking to launch into a long and expensive four-year degree program, and instead want to brush up on a specific skill or gain the technical knowledge necessary to break into a new field.
AI tools like Claude are capable of reviewing a cross-section of complicated requirements, like only being available for night courses or needing a certification within a specific time frame.
I tasked the tool with finding some hands-on, in-person classes designed to teach the fundamentals of construction over a specific time period. Although there were no programs as short as I’d specified, Claude AI came up with a program that was free, in-person and based in the state I needed.
Rate My Prof on steroids
Students may commonly use professor review sites like Rate My Profs to test the waters before signing up for what might turn out to be too much work or becoming saddled with a professor who has a reputation for any number of annoyances students commonly complain about on public message boards.
AI tools like Perplexity, a generative AI tool spearheaded by an ex-OpenAI employee, can look through those reviews by institution and give you insight into whether the faculty in your targeted program is a good fit for your style of learning.
I asked for a top three list of schools with the most dedicated, friendly professors around, and Perplexity was able to comb through student-led sources, like professor rating sites and Reddit threads, to give me the insights I wanted.
Student loans, grants and other money matters
Tuition and cost-per-credit are unsurprisingly top of mind for students I asked about their decision-making on where to pursue their education.
Perplexity was particularly adept at reviewing costs associated with programs you can find online. Details like hidden costs may also be at the tips of your AI tool’s intelligent tentacles if current and past students have made posts about the cost of things like books, tools, gear and other associated purchases made mandatory in some learning environments.
Political climate and community
Educational institutions are facing increased scrutiny on everything from curriculum to the actions of their student bodies.
Perplexity quickly scanned searchable current and past media coverage, as well as determined sentiment on college campuses around key hallmarks of the academic experience, like free speech, donor influence and campus-related activities and groups.
Perplexity offered a highly structured, well-researched and sourced overview of the most liberal and most conservative colleges in the US in an easy-to-digest format.
Wherever and however you decided to pursue your educational goals, AI tools can offer you a much wider perspective on the experience you can expect than a traditional search.
But the best way to get a real feel for what your educational experience will look like is to visit a campus yourself, sit in on a class if it’s allowed and drop a note to a professor teaching a course you’re interested in.
