DEV Community: Bosco Kalinijabo

Should Education Be Free in the Age of AI?

Bosco Kalinijabo — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 10:54:13 +0000

In 2023, when I was searching for a school to pursue my master’s degree, I wasn’t focused on the specific criteria. What I wanted was an advanced education that would deepen what I already knew, challenge me with new experiences, help me gain fresh skills, expose me to a different environment, allow me to build a strong network, and, of course, earn a degree from a good institution.

Choosing a school involves many considerations such as tuition fees, location, programs offered, reputation, longevity of the program, and even the visa application process.

One weekend, I was on my laptop juggling different ideas, a thought struck me, back in my home country, Rwanda, there are some agencies that help students apply for different schools abroad (They get paid for this service, of course).

But why don’t applicants just do it by themselves? I asked some whom I know were planning to continue their studies abroad. Their answers were in general telling how it’s not easy, it’s overwhelming, or it takes too much time to filter useful information from a big pool of schools. And I thought, what AI could contribute to this?

AI and the Future of Learning

Artificial Intelligence is becoming part of every sector. With the rise of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), models are getting better at understanding, reasoning and answering plain-language requests. When OpenAI released GPT-5, people quickly realized, this model operates at a PhD level of intelligence, and it’s accessible for free (just have an account).

That raises a fascinating question, if I can access PhD-level knowledge 24/7, does that mean I could become a PhD-level skilled in any field, without spending 3 to 5 years in a traditional program? And if so, what comes after a PhD though?

This made me rethink education as a whole. Shouldn’t education, from searching for schools to accessing content be free, or at least far more accessible? idk.

Building a School Search Portal

Motivated by these questions, I built a simple prototype, an AI-powered school search portal. Instead of drowning in endless websites and conflicting information, you just type your request in plain English, and the system returns the top 10 schools with the most crucial information to help you decide.

Technical details:

Backend: Python with FastAPI
AI integration: OpenAI API
Frontend: Next.js
To be hosted soon.

Open-source: GitHub Repository

How it works:

You enter your program of interest in plain English in input text and select your country of origin so the system can analyze visa requirements.

The portal then presents results on a single screen, including:

School name
Location
Program name & type (technical, bachelor’s, master’s, PhD)
Duration
Application deadlines
Scholarships (if available)
Tuition fees
Language of instruction
School reputation
Acceptance rate
Visa process overview

Of course, not all information (especially visa details) will be 100% accurate, you should always double-check. But the point is clear, AI can dramatically simplify the process.

The Big Question ?

So, do we still need to struggle to access top-level education and attend classes? The answer is both No and Yes. No, we don’t have to struggle anymore—AI has made information and opportunities more accessible than ever. But also, Yes in attending classes, learning in a structured environment, engaging with peers, receiving emotional support, and experiencing campus life are aspects of education that AI can never fully replace.

But do we need to spend years pursuing a degree like a PhD, when AI gives us constant access to PhD-level knowledge? That’s debatable. Many of the people building these models hold PhDs themselves, yet the tools they’ve created are democratizing access to advanced knowledge.

If AI can put a PhD-level intelligence in our pockets, why should advanced education still feel like an exclusive privilege?

A Personalized News Summary AI Tool with me.

Bosco Kalinijabo — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 22:56:30 +0000

Have you wished to read like top 5 latest articles all at once on a single page and in just a few minutes instead of turning pages 🤔? Nowadays, everything is fast, there are many things to read, from newsletters we subscribed to, flooding into our email inbox every morning to articles we come across shared with us or popping up on our social media timelines, it could be challenging to cover them all.

I recently pondered how I could stay updated with the news from home 🇷🇼, while also exploring new interests and learning. Many reasons can be as excuses for not finding time to read the news (I don't know mine honestly 🤭). One of the popular online newspapers for Rwandan news in English is the New Times.

With artificial intelligence (AI) booming in every corner of our lives, [ from my view ] it has seemed to be facilitating us rather than taking over our jobs ( now we are less worried, even though Devin is there), that's why I have been interested lately in software engineering with AI/ML. A plethora of models are being released daily and platforms like HuggingFace have been free of access to a vast of the models, datasets, demo apps, and AI/ML researchers.

I wanted to read the latest articles but in briefe, summarized. I used the Bart-large-cnn for summarization, as one of the Machine learning (ML) models.

from transformers import pipeline
summarizer = pipeline("summarization", model="facebook/bart-large-cnn")
ARTICLE = 'put-all-your-contents-here'
summarizer(ARTICLE, max_length=130, min_length=30, do_sample=False)

you can explore more here.

The model mentioned above was used to summarize the 5 latest extracted articles, by web scrapping them.

A web scraper automates the process of extracting information from other websites, quickly and accurately
and one of the libraries for easing the job is BeautifulSoup4 for parsing HTML and XML into texts, then summarizes one article per article in 130 characters on maximum.

[Check how it returns the articles with Postman]

To integrate everything, I built an API with Django in the backend (wanted to keep it in Python) and react.js for the readers ( Front End).

Additionally, the reader can also opt to receive these summarised articles via their email at the scheduled time using the SMTP application layer protocol.
[ check how they are sent in email]

In conclusion, many models can accomplish similar tasks, tools like ChatGPT or Claude, etc... This project was an exploration of what different tools combined could do, thanks to AI/ML for easing the job. Numerous tools are being developed and released to assist us in our work, from generating graphics to composing audio to enhancing the articles we write. it is up to us to know how we can integrate these tools into our projects and get the best out of them.

NB. Retrieving all the articles and summarizing them at once takes some seconds, a lot still needs to be improved 😉, remember, it was for fun. Here is the link to the project.

Kotlin vs Python

Bosco Kalinijabo — Sun, 25 Jul 2021 14:38:35 +0000

Recently I’ve started learning Kotlin. It was not my first time looking into it, But you are aware that you can even forget how to declare a variable in a certain language if you do not use it regularly, that’s my story. In 2019 I learnt Kotlin with Kotlin in Action Book, but never had space to use it until now as my work is asking me to open that book again.

If you love Python and use it often as I do, the bad news is, in some case It might not work for you for a certain project. Python is the best dynamic language, but it is worth learning a statistically typed language. Large projects demand the rigour of a statically typed language, Kotlin can provide that rigour with no drawbacks such as verbose syntax.
From the couple days I have been learning Kotlin, I have noticed some difference, from their name to the their extension 😉

· Kotlin is a statically programming language while Python is dynamic.
· Python is easier to learn and read than kotlin ( it would depend on your readability.
· They are all open source tools
· They are all cross platforms – ( compatible with many operating system)
· Var or Val when declaring in kotlin, but no formula to declare a variable in python
· Both don’t bother with semicolon at the end of the syntax
· Kotlin looks familiar with Java while Python is comparable to Ruby
· Both are used in web development ( Django, flask for python, and Spring Boot , javelin for Kotlin )
· Both can be used in Backend development side
· Kotlin has a huge advantage over python in mobile development ( Android )
· Kotlin is Backed up by Google
· Kotlin is faster to compile
· Kotlin provides built-in null safety support
· Kotlin is compatible with all java libraries
· Kotlin user Junit ( 4,5), mocks, Assertion tests while python use unit test or integration test
· They all have many built in functions ( for instance math ).

Let’s see how they are different syntax.

I may conclude by saying, if you want to start coding, python is the best suit to start on as it was not hard for me when i was learning it but Kotlin is like butter over bread. Having Kotlin as an additional language will help us (you ) target more solutions, and you become more valuable on market.