The Future of Education

Worldwide, the higher education systems are confronted with various issues within a large bureaucratic setting. Time constraints, limited budgets and lack of human resources put strain on managing various tasks. In order to reduce the stress affecting teachers, students, and administrative staff in different departments, viable and easy-to-implement solutions are needed. The relatively young Robotic Process Automation (RPA) technology could allow reducing “the burden of repetitive, simple tasks on employees” [1]. Robotic Process Automation tools could allow the automation of a huge number of redundant manual processes. Recently, it has been noted that RPA starts to play an important role in various industries. The research firm Forrester predicts that the worldwide market for RPA services will reach $7.7 billion in 2020 and will grow to $12 billion by 2023 [2]. Although the recent development of this technology allows multiple benefits across various domains, educational institutions are slow to implement solutions based on it. There is limited research to investigate the solutions associated with RPA for various problems encountered in educational institutions. Taking into account the above-mentioned facts, this paper aims to provide some insight into the concept of Robotic Process Automation, as well as a broader perspective upon its successful implementation, in future, in the educational system.

Keywords: Robotic Process Automation (RPA), higher education.

References
[1] Aguirre, S. & Rodriguez, A. Automation of a business process using robotic process automation (RPA): A case study. in Workshop on Engineering Applications 65–71. (2017).
[2] Joseph, L., Le Clair, C., O'Donnell, G., Sharma, A., Dangi, S., Nagel, B., The RPA Services Market Will Grow To Reach $12 Billion By 2023. Despite Growth, Scale Remains Elusive For Enterprises, Forrester (2019).