School and university management software

Running the school and the university, from the college portal to admissions

Every college student knows the college portal. It is where you check your attendance and marks, pay your fees, and download your hall ticket before an exam. Many Indian colleges call it the college ERP. Behind that portal sit the systems that run a school or a university.

The main systems

Student information system (SIS)

The record of every student: admission, attendance, timetable, grades, fees and transcripts. This is what the college portal shows.

Learning management system (LMS)

Where each course lives online. Teachers post lectures and assignments, students submit their work, and quizzes are marked.

University ERP

The system that runs the institution's own money and staff: accounts, purchasing, payroll and HR. For a university, it is often joined with the student information system.

Admissions

The pipeline that takes a student from first enquiry to application, offer and enrolment.

Campus life

Student housing, ID cards, payments on campus, and the laptops and tablets that schools give their students.

Alumni and fundraising

American universities raise large sums from their former students. Keeping in touch with alumni is a job with its own software.

The systems along a student's time at a college: admissions (EDMO, INTO University Partnerships), student records (PowerSchool, Anthology Inc.), courses (Blackboard, and PowerSchool's Schoology), campus life (StarRez Inc., SpaceBasic, Transact Campus, GoGuardian) and alumni (Almabase), with the university ERP (Ellucian) running the institution's money and staff underneath.

Who buys. The buyers are school districts, colleges and universities. They buy slowly, often through tenders, and keep a system for many years, because moving every student's records is risky. The market is led by American companies. Several of them build their products in Bengaluru and Chennai.

New kinds of degree. A degree counts only if it comes from an accredited institution: one that an official body has checked and recognised. New companies are finding ways to offer degrees online, or inside existing universities, while keeping that recognition. (More on colleges built this way in Market Segment 42.7, Tech-led colleges and universities.)

Every company named here has posted software engineering jobs in India. Famous companies that don't actively hire software engineers in India are left out.

This Market Segment has two sub-segments:

The institution's systems: student records, courses, the university's ERP and other systems that run a school or college

Admissions, campus life and new kinds of degree: recruiting students, housing and paying on campus, alumni, and new routes to a degree

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The institution's systems
Admissions, campus life and new kinds of degree

The institution's systems

Student information systems, learning management, university ERP, clinical placements, content platforms, classroom devices, childcare and school administration

Student records, courses and the university's ERP

PowerSchool

with engineers in Bengaluru and Chennai, sells the student information system used by many American school districts. It also sells Schoology, for running courses, and Naviance, which helps students plan for college. PowerSchool has the most job postings in this Market Segment.

Anthology Inc.

with engineers in Chennai and Bengaluru, sells Blackboard Learn, a learning management system, and student systems for universities. Blackboard, with engineers in Chennai, is part of the same business.

Ellucian

with engineers in Bengaluru, sells the ERP on which many universities run.

Specialist systems

Exxat

with engineers in Bengaluru, manages clinical placements. Nursing and medical students must train in hospitals, and each placement decides where a student trains and for how long.

LearningMate

with engineers in Mumbai, builds content platforms for publishers and universities.

GoGuardian

with engineers in Bengaluru, manages the devices that schools give their students. It also filters what students can open on them.

illumine

founded in Bengaluru, runs the administration of childcare centres and their messages to parents.

OneOrigin

with engineers in Bengaluru, sells AI systems to universities.

Three more companies work in this area: nexquare, OS4ED - Open Solutions for Education, Inc. and edumerge.

One company covered mainly in another Market Segment also works here:

Festo India

with engineers in Bengaluru, builds training labs and learning factories for colleges. A learning factory is a small working production line, on which students learn automation. (More on it in Market Segment 37.5, Industrial machinery and robotics, in Industry Vertical 37, Manufacturing tech.)

Admissions, campus life and new kinds of degree

Admissions and international recruitment, student housing, campus cards and payments, alumni and fundraising, accredited online and partner degrees

Admissions and recruitment. India is one of the largest sources of international students in the world. Universities abroad compete to recruit them.

EDMO

with engineers in Pune, uses AI to automate university admissions.

INTO University Partnerships

with engineers in Bengaluru, recruits international students for British and American universities.

Campus life

StarRez Inc.

with engineers in Hyderabad, and SpaceBasic, with engineers in Bengaluru, run student housing, such as university hostels. (More on both in Market Segment 41.2, Property and facilities management software, in Industry Vertical 41, Proptech.)

Transact Campus

with engineers in Chennai, runs campus ID cards and cashless payments on campus. (More on it in Market Segment 17.3, Point of sale (POS), in Industry Vertical 17, Payments.)

Almabase

founded in India, with engineers in Bengaluru, runs alumni engagement and fundraising.

New kinds of degree

Woolf

with engineers in Bengaluru, Pune and Hyderabad, runs an accredited federation. Online schools join it, and award accredited degrees through it.

Kalvium

with engineers in Bengaluru, runs computer-science degrees inside partner universities. It brings its own curriculum and AI.

New routes to an accredited degree: besides a university awarding its own, online schools can award degrees through Woolf's accredited federation, and Kalvium runs computer-science degrees inside partner universities. Either way the degree counts because an accredited institution stands behind it.

The university as software.

New kinds of degree, run on platforms like Woolf's and Kalvium's, work inside or across existing universities. They are testing how much of a university is its software and curriculum, and how much is its campus. AI models add teaching assistants, and admissions systems that read every application. The old student systems are being rebuilt around them.

That is the software that runs a school or a university: the student records, the courses, the admissions and the campus. Most of it serves American institutions, and much of it is built in Bengaluru and Chennai.

Who they hire

Who these companies hire, and for what, is on What edtech companies hire for.

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