Tired of college admission paperwork? Relief soon as varsities go digital

From a paper-based manual process, universities are digitising the entire gamut of academic and campus management

If you are a college student, you have likely braved the arduous task of going through the college admission process, which usually involves a lot of paperwork and formalities — more so, if the institution is in a smaller town. Starting from applying to various colleges to selecting courses to filling up forms, approvals and so on, the whole exercise is lengthy, complicated and tiresome. 

This is about to change. Institutions and universities are starting to adopt a digital architecture for campus management to facilitate quick turnaround of academic formalities and streamline the student life cycle. 

Take Kazi Nazrul University (KNU), near Asansol in West Bengal, which has around 20 colleges affiliated to it. KNU may not figure in any of the university ranking lists in the country, but it is among those that have digitised the exam management process end-to-end — starting from candidate enrolment to exam planning to result processing and publishing. The university is using TCS iON Digital Campus Solution, which comprises a suite of offerings that support academic and administrative processes and digitises end-to-end management of campus activities. With 11 million students accessing iON’s digital campus solution, TCS iON has helped many institutions make the switch to a paperless management system.  At KNU, answer sheets are now digitally stored, thus reducing the delay in announcing results. Its admissions and recruitment processes are also entirely online. Every student is provided with a user ID and a password with which he or she can log into the system and deposit fees online, fill up examination forms or complete the registration process.

“In the field of education, transparency and accuracy is crucial. With a digital process in place, the scope of human intervention has considerably reduced, and as a result, the admission process and other related activities have been made fully transparent,” claimed Santanu Kumar Ghosh, registrar at KNU. The university is spending Rs 20 lakh per annum towards subscribing to this solution.

“With campus efficiency being the need of the hour, collaborative tools and effective learning content management systems are essential. Institutions are keen on integrated solutions that will ensure smooth processes for all stakeholders,” said Venguswamy Ramaswamy, global head, TCS iON, a strategic unit of Tata Consultancy Services.

“This integrated solution comprises modules that are defined as per each stakeholder – administration, teaching staff, and students — providing flexibility to automate functions according to requirement,” he added.

It is not just institutions — governments are also waking up to the necessity of digitising the education management process. The Government of India’s flagship Skill India programme runs on the integrated skill management platform provided by Campus Management Corporation (CMC), a US-headquartered education software company. This helps the authorities keep track of millions of applicants and connect them to relevant opportunities. Similarly, the Department of Vocational and Educational training in Maharashtra, which manages 1108 ITIs in the state, is also using this skill management system. 

“The simplest and most helpful solution has been in ensuring that admission forms have been made available in vernacular languages like Hindi and Marathi to facilitate digital inclusion for the students’ guardians as well,” said Raj Mruthyunjayappa, senior vice president and managing director at CMC.

Last year, the Maharashtra government announced to implement a cloud-based university management system to create a single-window system to manage and track admission processes. The project will digitise the administrative and academic processes of all the 14 non-technical universities in the state, comprising 4,700 affiliated colleges and 2.7  million students. 

Implemented with the help of CMC, the system looks at all admissions criteria, including academic scores and reservation category, of a candidate, before awarding admission. It then tracks academic performance, grades and attendance of each student through the cloud-based software. And as the academic cycle gets over, it connects students with industry for employment opportunities. UMS also helps in designing courses and syllabus frameworks, processing and renewal of affiliation, conducting exams and issuing of mark sheets/degrees. It will streamline HR functions as well. 

“One of the key complexities that we have witnessed is in the number of sub categories, grace marks and reservation requirements across the entire admission and examination process. This requires a lot of care while being automated,” added Mruthyunjayappa of CMC.

One of the key outcomes from the campus based ERP systems like these has been the realisation that institutions have a lot to learn from a students’ data to provide better learning recommendation and grading assessment. Be it for a Skill India initiative or the recent initiative by a few IIMs to build a strong student academic data mapping program.

IIM-A, for example, is implementing a ‘student life cycle management system’ which will utilise and analyse student data including admission information, scheduling, grades, and summer internship and placement details to improve solutions that can be offered to students. 

While institutions in tier-I cities tend to have some form of existing ERP systems, Chennai based education-tech startup, Uletktz, is targeting those located in smaller cities with a plug and play system that can be implemented in a matter of days. According to Sadiq Sait, Founder and CEO, Ulektz, the company follows two models — a B2B one, consisting of institutional ERP with an annual subscription approach, and a B2C one, consisting of student-level apps for books, online courses and job or internship opportunities offered through a marketplace. 

(With inputs from Avishek Rakshit)