What is the student operating system?

Student administration can be broken down into three subsystems:

• Recruitment and admissions
• Student record maintenance
• Assessment and certification.

Beginning with the admission process, a student record must be created that then becomes a central resource for all subsequent administrative processes. The student record files provide the basis for:

• Mailing materials to the correct addresses
• Asking for fee payments
• Informing students about local tutorial arrangements
• Prompting students to choose courses for the following year.

The student operating system comes under particular stress at the end of the year, when many functions must be performed almost simultaneously, for a large number of students. For examinations held nationwide, hundreds of thousands of scores must be recorded, analyzed, and standardized. And at the same time that the examination results are being distributed, procedures must be under way to assign students and tutors to new courses, ready for the start of a new academic year within a few weeks of the closure of the old.