In developing countries, a massive growth in demand for higher education can be noted as more students than ever are moving through the education pipeline—from primary to secondary and on to tertiary. It is estimated that there will be 380 million higher education students by 2030. This increase has been driven by factors such as increasing educational attainment throughout life, population growth and urbanization, and economic development. An estimated 127 million adults are currently considered under or unemployed globally. The gap between the need for and supply of higher education workers will only widen over the next decade. The demand for workers with higher education is growing at a faster pace, which can be attributed to the rising level of education globally and particularly in low- and middle-income countries.

Let us delve deep into the three most important trends that have the potential to revolutionize higher education in 2023.

Growing Career Opportunities in AI

AI plays a pivotal role in pandemics, predicting and detecting the outbreak of diseases, alerting us of potential dangers and analyzing and visualizing spread trends in real-time. Additionally, AI can help rapid decision-making to identify effective treatments, study pathogens and even discover new drugs - all at a much faster pace than humans could ever hope to achieve.

Artificial intelligence has proven its effectiveness through many applications in society: medical diagnostics, e-commerce, robot control and remote sensing. It has been able to advance many fields and industries including finance, education, transportation and others.  

“The rise of AI and Machine Learning will help companies to design customized learning for each individual which is not possible in the existing scheme of things”, says Rahul K. Mishra, Professor, IILM – New Delhi.

AI in healthcare provides a significant advantage over traditional analytics and clinical decision-making techniques. Machine learning (ML) algorithms, a subset of AI, can detect patterns from huge complex datasets to become more precise and accurate as they interact with training data.

Machine Learning engineer, robotics engineer, computer vision engineer, and data scientist are going to be some of best moves in career of artificial intelligence.  

Big Data in Higher Education

As assessment processes evolve and learning management systems become more prevalent in universities and colleges, big data analytics is also becoming a significant higher education trend. Educators use big data to track student engagement so they can look for engagement trends in their online course activities and make changes to content. Big data analytics helps educators understand how students interact with course content so they can make necessary changes to improve the learning experience.

Big data has the potential to change the way academic institutions function by integrating systems, applications, and platforms. This would allow for a more streamlined and efficient experience for students, staff, and faculty.

Big data is changing the landscape of higher education, and Florida State University is an example of the change it can bring about. The institution has developed a predictive analytics tool that uses data from students' academic and social media histories to identify those who are at risk of dropping out. The tool has been successful in reducing the university's dropout rate by 2.5 percent.

People can analyze attrition rates, total enrolment for courses, and student success to improve instructional designs.

Increase in Online Assessments in Higher Education

Online assessments have continued to grow in popularity in the past year and are now a major trend to watch out for in 2023. They provide a standardized and reliable means of assessing and evaluating students that is much more convenient than traditional in-person methods. Online proctoring is where online invigilators monitor the test takers from start to finish to ensure they are not cheating in any way. In addition, the test takers must share their audio, video, and screens with the proctors for the entire test duration.

With the increase in online assessments in higher education, it is more important than ever to ensure that your assessment tools are accessible to all students. By making sure that your assessment tools are accessible, you can help level the playing field for all students, regardless of their ability level.

There are multiple assessments that are running, facilitating student learning and improving instructions, and can take a variety of forms. Compared to all assessments, the E-Learning assessment during the COVID-19 pandemic proved to be the best way.

The Way Ahead

With usage of new technologies, today you can access learning resources from anywhere at any time. Automating time-consuming tasks like record keeping or grading multiple-choice tests through AI can help you save time. This is likely to continue to rise as universities strive to maintain their quality of education. Finally, there is the trend of students taking on more debt to finance their education. This is likely to continue as the cost of tuition rises and scholarships become harder to obtain.