Selected work · Higher Education
Client
CINEC Campus (Pvt.) Ltd.
Programme
World Bank–funded Accelerating Higher Education Expansion and Development (AHEAD) operation, administered by the Ministry of Higher Education
Engagement
Resource Person consultancy, Development-Oriented Research (Results Area 3)
Sector
Higher Education
The stated request was clear. Build an online tool that recommends the most suitable academic field for a student, using SWOT analysis and an algorithm. Six deliverables. Six months. A scoped brief from a World Bank–funded programme with a defined outcome.
We worked the other direction first. Before the algorithm, before the interface, before a single line of code, the engagement spent its early weeks not building but observing: looking at what actually drives a student's degree choice in Sri Lanka, and where the existing decision process breaks down.
Three observations changed the brief.
A single assessment instrument was not enough. Personality alone, learning style alone, career-interest profiling alone. Each missed dimensions the others captured.
A one-shot recommendation was not enough. Students with a long-held personal preference do not abandon it because an algorithm tells them to. A system that ignored this would be a system students ignored.
A present-day employment forecast was not enough. The horizon needed to be ten to thirty years, within the lifespan of the degree itself.
These observations shaped what was built: a three-model assessment, a long-horizon employment mapping, and a negotiation layer that surfaces the risks of a student's preferred choice rather than overriding it.
All six contracted deliverables were completed and accepted. Intellectual property, including the Intelo™ trademark and patent, is held by CINEC Campus.
The build was the easy part. The diagnosis was the engagement.