While One Large Figure Waits for Approval, New Options Wait Too. Four Ways to Replace, Weighed.

The governing body’s agenda has two items that never meet.

Item four asks whether the institution should consider a second intake in January. The registrar’s note says the admissions application takes one intake a year, and changing it would wait for the new system.

Item nine asks for approval to replace the administrative applications, with one figure larger than the year’s whole building budget. A member asks what it is made of; the paper says it is a supplier’s estimate. Another asks what staying as we are costs. Nobody has that number. The item is noted, as it was two years ago, and item four waits too.

What We Found

For this article we went through the public record: trade press reporting in 2025 on one US university’s replacement, one sector body’s report on UK universities as carried in the trade press in 2026, one cross-sector survey of US IT professionals from 2025, and two documents of India’s University Grants Commission (UGC): its 2025 degree regulations and its letter of 5 June 2026 on uploading academic records.

First, what we did not find: no public case of a replacement at a mid-size institution, a private college, a school group or a coaching institute; nothing from the Middle East; and no figure for what a replacement costs at an institution of our readers’ size. The one case we found is a very large US university bringing in a packaged product, which is not our kind of work.

The one public case is very large. One very large US university, the trade press reported in late 2025, replaced dozens of separate student systems, which a senior finance officer described as fragile applications built in-house in the 1990s, with a packaged product. The publication puts the cost in the hundreds of millions of US dollars, spread over several years. The only reason the record gives is that the old system was near the end of its life; it says where the money went, not why.

Staying is not free either, by one early estimate. One sector body’s report on old technology in UK universities, as the trade press reported it in 2026, says old technology could be costing the sector billions of pounds a year. The body itself says no settled method yet exists for costing old technology, and calls its figure an early analysis. It is an early, indicative estimate about UK universities.

Money is a common reason to wait. In one cross-sector survey of about five hundred US IT professionals, which is not about education, more than four in ten gave budget limitations as a reason they had not upgraded.

New options have arrived for Indian institutions. The UGC’s regulations on minimum standards of instruction for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, notified on 26 March 2025, apply, in their own words, to “every University established or incorporated by or under a Central Act, a Provincial Act, or a State Act, all institutions and colleges recognized by or affiliated to such Universities, and all institutions deemed to be universities under Section 3 of the UGC Act 1956”. They allow, and do not require, that “HEIs prepared to handle biannual admissions may admit students twice a year, in July/August and January/February.” They say that “HEIs shall provide multiple entry and exit options in the academic programmes.” A student who exits after earning 40 credits is awarded an undergraduate certificate, provided they have also done a skill-enhancement course of at least 4 credits over and above those 40, and “Students shall be allowed to join back in the 2nd year at level 5 before the expiry of the credits earned, subject to a maximum duration of seven years.” The regulations say nothing about any institution’s systems.

In India, the UGC set a window for uploading academic records. On 5 June 2026 the UGC wrote to universities and autonomous colleges that records for Examination Year 2025 were to be uploaded to the NAD/ABC platform by 30 June 2026, and that the window would then close. The letter says nothing about institutions’ own systems. That date has passed. When we checked on 15 October 2026, this letter was the newest item on the NAD/DigiLocker circulars page, and we found no letter for Examination Year 2026 there or on the UGC’s notices page.

Our reading: while a replacement waits as one figure, the options that depend on the old applications wait with them.

What Waits While One Figure Waits

The usual view is that deferring keeps every option open. Our reading is that some options wait with the old applications.

A second intake. Our reading: an admissions application built for one intake a year cannot take a January cohort without change. The regulations permit, and do not require, a second intake for institutions “prepared to handle biannual admissions”; whether an institution offers one is its own decision.

Exits and returns. Our reading: a records application that knows only a full degree has nowhere to record a certificate at an exit, or a return years later.

Uploads against a closing date. The UGC’s letter of 5 June 2026 set a closing date for Examination Year 2025 records. Our reading: where marksheets and credit data are put together by hand for the platform, that work has to be done before such a date. Any upload, and what goes into it, stays with the institution’s registry and examination section.

This is our reading of the evidence. It is not a measured market figure.

Four Ways to Replace, Weighed

There are four real options. Each one is right for somebody.

Option	When it fits	What it risks
Patch and keep the old applications	They still work, and the institution does not plan to take up new options soon	Each new option is added to code few people can change, and the eventual replacement grows
One programme to bring in a packaged product	The institution’s work matches what the product does as it comes	One large figure and one go-live; fitting the product means custom changes. Not our kind of work; for some institutions it is the right choice
One programme to rebuild everything custom	The applications are few and well documented, and funding for several years is assured	The figure is set before the applications are read, and nothing is in use until the end
Assess first, then replace module by module, with the old applications still in use	The applications are the institution’s own, and its governing body wants to approve one stage at a time	It costs money before anything is built, the total may be higher than a first guess, and two systems run side by side for a time

Where You Are Now, and Where You Should Be

Before any work begins we set a benchmark: a few measures taken from your own systems, each with a target. For this issue it would look like this.

Measure	Typical starting point	Where it should be	How it is checked
Cost of staying	Spread across offices and never added up	Written down beside the cost of replacing	The cost comparison
Price of the replacement	One figure, set before the applications are read	A fixed quote for each stage, after they are read	The staged plan with its fixed quote
What is uncertain	A margin inside the figure	Listed before the price is set	The risk register
Changes the institution wants, such as a second intake	”After the replacement”	Each tied to the application that holds it back, with what would have to change	The specification and the risk register
What each stage brings	Everything, at the end	Each stage named with the module that goes into use	The staged plan

The starting points above are what we expect to find; in an engagement they are replaced by your own figures, taken in the first review. The targets are what we would work towards with you. They are not results we have already achieved for an education body.

How We Work With You

1. We listen: a free Reliability Review. A first conversation about the applications, the replacement proposal and the changes waiting on it. You leave with a short written note of what we found. You can start with a conversation about the system; we ask for read-only code access only when the assessment begins.
2. We research. We research your sector, the regulator’s position and what the public record says about firms in your situation. This article is an example of that work.
3. We read the system and propose: the Legacy System Specification Assessment. Here the system is the set of applications the institution built or had built and wants to replace. It produces a map of the system as it stands, a written specification of what it does, a risk register, a cost comparison between keeping and replacing the system, and a staged plan with a fixed quote. AI does a first pass, our senior engineers review it and trace it to the code, and your own experts confirm it. Code access is read-only and logged, never used for training, and deleted within 30 days of the evaluation ending unless we engage. You get the options and our recommendation.
4. If you approve, we build. We replace a system one module at a time while the old one keeps running. We never do a single cutover. Each module has a traceability matrix. The work is billed by milestone, each milestone tied to a module you accept, and you can pause after any accepted module.
5. We review against the benchmark. Before work starts we set the benchmark. After each module we show you where each measure stands, and the filled-in benchmark is yours at the end.

The Review is free. Every paid step is fixed price, agreed at scoping. Stop after any step. The findings are yours. The assessment fee is credited in full against the first build stage if it starts within 90 days of the report.

What we do not do: we do not implement, configure or move a packaged student, finance, HR or learning product. We do not keep the old applications running or secure while they are replaced; the institution’s own team or supplier does. We do not upload records to any platform, and we do not move, clean, correct or vouch for student, fee or results records; our confidentiality terms cover code, not records. We give no legal advice and do not say what any UGC rule or letter requires of an institution. We do not say a staged replacement is quicker or cheaper overall. We do not say we are empanelled with any government, university or board, and we give no advice on purchasing rules. We have no published case of this work for an education body.

What changes for the business:

Role	What they gain
Head of institution	A replacement becomes a decision the governing body can take one stage at a time, on a figure with a basis and the cost of staying beside it.
Registrar	The registry can see which stage changes which register and certificate, before the first one is approved.
Head of finance	Each stage has its own price, set beside the written cost of staying, so finance weighs two figures and not one.
Head of IT	The unknowns are in a risk register before the price is set, and are not met later as change requests.
Controller of examinations	The examination modules are a stage with a price of their own, so the section’s own checks are priced inside that stage, not traded against one large budget.

The cases in this article, and what IOanyT does about that kind of problem:

The case	What IOanyT does
One very large US university replaced dozens of separate student systems with a packaged product, at a cost the trade press puts in the hundreds of millions of US dollars over several years.	We do not implement packaged products, we make no comment on that programme, and our part is far narrower. For applications an institution built, we read them first, then price each stage beside the cost of staying.

IOanyT is a consultancy with its own engineering team: we study the problem, recommend, and prove it by building only what you approve. We turn one figure nobody can judge into stages a governing body can approve, each priced after the applications have been read.

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