Universities to adopt Samarth platform as Centre pushes paperless higher education administration

In a significant step towards standardising digital governance in higher education, universities across several states are set to migrate their academic and administrative processes to Samarth, the enterprise resource planning platform developed under the aegis of the Union Ministry of Education. Higher education officials said the move is aimed at reducing paperwork, improving transparency, and bringing uniformity in university administration.

The Samarth platform is designed as an end to end digital system that integrates key functions such as admissions, examinations, student records, faculty management, finance, human resources, and institutional reporting. Once fully implemented, universities will be able to conduct most administrative operations without physical files, significantly altering long standing bureaucratic practices in public higher education institutions.

According to officials overseeing the rollout, the transition to Samarth is not merely a technological upgrade but a governance reform. The platform enables real time data capture and reporting, allowing universities, state governments, and the Centre to track enrolments, programme outcomes, faculty deployment, and financial flows with greater accuracy. This, policymakers argue, will strengthen evidence based decision making in a sector that has traditionally relied on fragmented and delayed data.

The push for Samarth aligns with the Centre’s broader objective of building a national digital education architecture, as envisioned under the National Education Policy 2020. By standardising workflows across universities, the government aims to reduce administrative inefficiencies that often delay examinations, results, degree issuance, and student services. Officials also point to the platform’s potential to curb discretionary practices by ensuring that academic and financial processes follow defined digital trails.

However, the shift has not been without challenges. University administrators have flagged concerns over capacity building, noting that many institutions, particularly in smaller towns, lack adequately trained staff to manage complex digital systems. There are also apprehensions about transition phase disruptions, data migration from legacy systems, and the need for continuous technical support.

The Centre has indicated that training programmes and phased implementation plans are being put in place to address these issues. Universities are expected to retain a degree of functional autonomy while adhering to a common digital backbone, a balance that officials say is necessary to respect institutional diversity while ensuring accountability.

If implemented effectively, Samarth could mark a structural shift in how Indian universities are administered, moving higher education governance away from paper heavy, siloed systems towards a more transparent, interoperable, and data driven model. The success of the initiative, however, will depend less on software adoption and more on institutional readiness to reengineer long entrenched administrative processes.