New tools promise quicker processing, much better student-course matching and enhanced risk assessment.
The Uni Guide, for instance, uses AI to help trainees recognize universities and courses that fit their aspirations, while UniReady Global has actually developed AI capabilities to help companies evaluate whether applicants are likely to be real trainees. Others are going even more, seeking to automate substantial parts, or even all, of the admissions process.
The tourist attraction is obvious.
AI procedures details at a scale no human team can match. It can triage applications, recognize missing out on files, flag inconsistencies, identify potential scams and highlight where a candidate’s background, aspirations and picked programme might not line up.
For organizations under growing pressure to hire effectively while handling compliance and expenses, AI offers real benefits.
However there is an important difference between using AI to support admissions decisions and enabling Agentic AI to make them.
The threat starts when a risk flag automatically ends up being a rejection, a course-fit rating becomes a gatekeeper, or an automated recommendation is dealt with as more objective than the human judgement it was developed to notify.
Three risks are worthy of specific attention.
The first is institutional repeating.
Professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington has actually observed that the big language models underpinning AI are inherently historical. They gain from what has occurred before.
That is precisely what makes them effective; but it also means they risk reproducing the other day’s patterns rather than determining tomorrow’s capacity.
Universities rightly talk about preparing students for a changing world. Yet admissions systems trained on previous mates may repeatedly favour applicants who resemble those currently admitted. Effectiveness could come at the expense of chance, overlooking gifted students whose potential sits outside historic norms.
The second difficulty is bias.
Admissions systems trained on previous accomplices might repeatedly favour candidates who resemble those already admitted
AI systems undoubtedly acquire the strengths and weaknesses of the information on which they are trained. Existing cultural, linguistic and instructional biases are not necessarily gotten rid of through automation; they can become embedded and amplified.
For institutions dedicated to broadening participation and variety, that ought to offer time out. As Norbert Wiener’s “positioning problem” reminds us, AI systems do not constantly produce results that show the values of those who develop them.
The third difficulty is ethical.
Nelson Mandela notoriously explained education as ‘the most effective weapon which you can use to alter the world’. If that is true, decisions about who gets to education can not become purely technical workouts.
Admissions decisions form lives. While AI may develop an appearance of neutrality, it can not exercise judgement, empathy or accountability. As Pope Leo XIV recently observed, entrusting algorithms with deciding who deserves opportunity dangers handing over responsibility for specifying the limits of human possibility.
None of this is an argument against AI. Rather the opposite.
Used well, AI can make admissions more effective, more consistent and more reliable. In establishing AI applications for The Uni Guide and UniReady Global, four specifying guardrails were adopted: transparency about where AI is used; clarity about how recommendations are reached; significant human oversight; and human accountability for both processes and outcomes.
College requires to accept AI however it ought to withstand the temptation to confuse automation with knowledge.
The future of admissions is not AI-led but AI-supported: systems that suggest, explain and determine threat, while people decide, accept responsibility for them and stay responsible for the consequences.
That is not just better admissions practice. It is how universities ensure technology continues to serve their mission, rather than redefine it.
About the author: Dr Lawrence Pratchett is the ceo of UniReady Global, an innovative technology platform that streamlines and strengthens the evaluation of international trainee applications. Leveraging advanced document and financial confirmation along with an AI-driven genuine-student interview, UniReady Global assists universities significantly reduce threat in their admissions processes.
Before establishing UniReady Global, Pratchett held senior academic management functions at the University of Canberra, serving as teacher of politics, pro vice-chancellor, and formerly dean of the faculty of organization, government and law.
Lawrence is chaining a panel on AI in Recruitment and Admissions at the upcoming PIE Live Asia Pacific on the Gold Coast.