The U.S. higher education sector faces a growing list of challenges- declining high school graduation rates, the soaring cost of a four-year degree, operating budget constraints, and increased competition from alternative degrees and career pathways. In light of these factors, institutions are striving to maintain or improve enrollment rates, and the critical process of transcript evaluations— key to admissions efficiency and student satisfaction—has required reimagining the current manual and labor-intensive transcript review process.
Higher education institutions are discovering how AI, cloud computing, and automation can streamline operations to accelerate admissions decisions, enhance student experience, and ensure long-term sustainability.
In this article, we will dive more deeply into Illinois Tech’s journey to improve admissions outcomes and explore how it can serve as a blueprint for higher education institutions worldwide.
Key Trends Impacting Enrollment in Traditional 4 year Degree programs
Colleges and universities are experiencing increased competition amongst themselves to attract students due to these economic and demographic dynamics:
- Declining Population of High School Graduates:
The projected decline of nearly 500,000 high school graduates between 2025 and 2030 shrinks the pool of college-aged students. To maintain sustainable enrollment levels, many institutions will need to broaden recruitment to include non-traditional, transfer, international, and under-represented students. - Record High Tuition Costs:
Families are questioning the ROI of a four-year degree, forcing institutions to work harder to justify their value, highlighting factors like increased lifetime earnings, job opportunities, and personal growth. - Tighter Operating Budgets:
Expected budget cuts are forcing institutions to consider eliminating academic and extracurricular programs and student services. Staffing cuts or hiring freezes mean institutions must do more to automate processes that previously were labor intensive. - Growing Competition from Alternative Career Pathways:
As prospective students prioritize practical skills and career outcomes over traditional degrees, institutions need to adapt programs to meet these evolving demands.
Pressure is on traditional colleges to compete with fully online degrees, boot camps, and vocational programs that offer flexible, cost-effective career pathways, challenging traditional institutions to demonstrate unique value.
Additionally, admissions teams relying on manual workflows for transcript processing and applicant verifications of all types are realizing delays in admissions decisions impact student enrollment rates which ultimately affect the financial health of the institution.
The Illinois Tech Story: Modernizing the Admissions Process with AI-Powered Automation
At Illinois Tech, where international students make up nearly 50% of the enrollment, the largely manual transcript review process for international applicants led to delays in admissions decisions. Additionally, prospective students relied on costly third-party vendors to evaluate their grades and course equivalencies. The admissions team spent countless hours mired in document reviews, slowing down decision-making and creating frustration for both applicants and staff.
To address these, Illinois Tech partnered with Quantiphi and AWS to implement QDox, a Gen AI-powered document processing platform built on AWS. QDox reimagined transcript workflows, automating data extraction, categorization, and validation to streamline the admissions process. This transformation significantly reduced application processing time from weeks to days, enabling faster, more efficient decision-making.
The Results?
- 60,000+ pages of academic transcripts are processed automatically
- Faster enrollment decisions with streamlined evaluation
- Enabling analytics for better enrollment and fiscal planning
- Secure, compliant data access for admissions teams
- Multilingual translation of documents in 18 languages
- Time and cost savings for students by eliminating third-party transcript equivalency services
By leveraging AI-powered automation with the assistance of Quantiphi and AWS, Illinois Tech redefined its admissions process, improving operational efficiency, accelerating decision-making, and elevating the student experience. Their roadmap for this technology will expand to domestic transcript processing in the near future.
Key Takeaways for Higher Education Leaders
The Illinois Institute of Technology’s success is a blueprint for universities looking to modernize admissions. Here are three critical takeaways from their transformation journey:
- AI-Driven Admissions Automation: With platforms like Quantiphi’s QDox, universities can eliminate manual transcript processing, extract and analyze the data they need, and accelerate enrollment decisions.
- Centralized and Scalable Data Management on AWS: Admissions data is often fragmented across multiple systems. AWS-powered cloud infrastructure unifies and centralizes data, ensuring real-time access, seamless reporting, and department-wide collaboration. Scalable data repositories future-proof admissions workflows, allowing institutions to adapt to evolving enrollment demands.
- Enabling Analytics for Enrollment Planning: With QDox’s AI-powered insights, Illinois Tech is empowered to analyze admissions trends and applicant data for smarter enrollment management, ensuring institutions remain adaptive to changing demographics and student needs.
The Path Forward for Higher Education
The question isn’t whether universities should modernize admissions—it’s how quickly they can adapt to stay competitive. With AI-driven automation and cloud-enabled transformation of the admissions process, higher education institutions can take control and drive enrollment success, all within a short implementation period.
Get in touch today to partner with Quantiphi and AWS and start your journey toward admissions modernization.
