Innovative Student Placement and Selection in Higher Education Institutions: A Case Study of SMU

This paper reports on the findings of how the use of technology in the higher education institutions can minimize data inconsistency, increase end-user productivity, and have better data integration. Automation of business processes can also be used to the benefit of decision making in the selection and placement of the students. This will assist in attracting best first-time entry University students, eradicating human errors, and enforcing rules and regulations as stimulated in student admission and selection policy document. School of Science and Technology at Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University (SMU) has for years, been admitting students who apply for admission by manually allocating space and rejecting applications. This paper presents an innovative software solution for student selection and placement. The solution processed the same end-user data faster and generated accurate and valuable information for good decision making as compared to the manual system method. The results showed that the manual system had discrepancies and caused difficult-to-trace errors that produced incorrect and erroneous results.