If information is power, it is no wonder that high school students and their families feel so powerless when the momentous task of deciding what to do after graduation presents itself. Good decisions rely on good information, which has been hard to find.
Thats why artificial intelligence, with its ability to collect and synthesize vast amounts of information and present it simply, is about to start helping young people plan their lives more meaningfully.
In my education career, I have often noticed how even ambitious, high-achieving students had trouble picking the right colleges or careers after graduation. Most people are more focused on getting into a good school, rather than the likelihood of completing that degree.
Part of why this happens so often is that students, parents and guidance counselors often dont consider the return on investmentby which I mean post-secondary academic success as well as career prospectsat different institutions. The data exists, but can be hard to find and interpret.
As a result, people are flying blind in an information blackout with significant consequences, including difficulty finding a satisfying job that pays enough.
‘I never really knew before’
I built a prototype decision-making tool with my limited tech skills and brought it to a friend of mine, Douglas Jenkins, a developer who was a former educator and school district data director whose employer, WLCR.io, allowed him to work on pro bono side projects.
At , where I develop and evaluate education technology, we knew that educators and counselors had been struggling with this. Counselors in particular did not have enough information or enough time to talk meaningfully with their hundreds of students.
The average student gets just 41 minutes of college counseling in four years of high school. Thus, Counselor GPT came to be.
The tool draws on data from numerous trusted public data sources. One is the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, or IPEDS, which produces institutional data on every post-secondary institution.
Counselor GPT uses that to highlight things like persistence, debt and income statistics. Petersons Data provides the tool with more granular financial aid information not found in IPEDS. On the job side, Counselor GPT pulls current labor market data from Lightcast, which refreshes much more often than federal labor statistics.
Students began using it in November at 13 Urban Assembly schools in New York City, and so far they appreciate how intuitive and interactive it is. They appreciate that its conversational and interactive, and gives them access to data that is not available to students elsewhere.
Im excited to explore different jobs I probably wouldnt have thought of, one student told us after using it. Another said, “I’m excited to actually get an idea of what I want to do in the future since I never really knew before.
For guidance counselors, the feature they find most valuable is the nudge function. Other tools have dashboards that counselors can see, but they do nothing to prompt action.
Counselor GPT gives counselors the ability to recommend other alternatives to what they see students searching for. It helps counselors prioritize which students need attention and action most urgently, and helps them have more meaningful conversations with all students.
In addition, the nudge function guides counselors. It alerts counselors when students are looking at schools with low completion rates or lesser economic outcomes and enables counselors to recommend alternatives that are otherwise similar but with better educational or economic outcomes.
Making higher-quality decisions
Its too early to say if theres increased engagement on post-secondary searches for students, but certainly students are spending time with it and thats encouraging.
For these users, the tool shows a depth of information that would normally be difficult to access. It allows students and counselors to weigh the tradeoffs of different post-secondary education and career paths, gives counselors more insight into how students are thinking about their futures, and lets them nudge students in productive directions.
The initial student feedback has been gratifying and revealing. Students told us they hoped future versions of Counselor GPT could provide more information about available financial aid or review their own resumes or essays and provide feedback.
They were not without concerns, however. In particular, they worried about privacy. (Counselors can see summaries about student interactions, but not transcripts of what they type.)
One of the primary purposes of education, I would argue, is learning how to make the best decisions possible. This tool both enables that and teaches students how to do that on their own.
With information, they are less likely to make decisions blind, and thus will make higher-quality decisionsnot just on what to do once their high school careers end, but in life.
