Admissions and student services are the software around the degree itself: recruiting and admitting students, the hostel, the campus ID card, the laptops that a school hands out, and keeping in touch with former students. A university uses these systems before a student arrives, while she lives on campus, and for decades after she graduates.
Imagine a student from Agartala who joins a private university near Chennai for a B.Sc. in Data Science. Her path through these systems starts with an enquiry on the university's website. Admissions management software records the enquiry and answers her questions on WhatsApp. It also checks her Class 12 marksheet and sends her the offer letter. More and more often, the replies come from an AI customer service agent. This is software that holds the conversation on its own and hands harder questions to a human counsellor.
Universities in other countries recruit students from India too. Indian students who want to study in Britain or the United States often apply through international student recruitment companies. The foreign university pays such a company a commission for each student who enrols.
Once she pays her deposit, student housing management software gives her a hostel room and a roommate. Later, when the ceiling fan in her room stops working, she reports it in the same app. The report becomes a work order, one repair job logged as a record, so that it can be assigned to an electrician and tracked until it is closed.
Her student ID card is part of the campus card system. The card opens the library gate and the hostel door. It also pays for meals in the canteen, from a balance that her parents top up online.
Schools that give each student a laptop or tablet use school device management and web filtering. It controls which apps run on the devices and which websites students can open. These products are used mostly by schools in the United States.
Years after she graduates, alumni management software keeps her contact details up to date. It invites her to reunions, connects her with current students as a mentor, and asks her to donate to a scholarship fund.
All these systems take the student's identity from the student information system (SIS). So when she leaves the hostel or graduates, every one of them can update her status.