New Delhi: India has drawn up an ambitious plan to digitize higher education, aiming to expand online learning and strengthen research facilities under the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT), two government officials aware of the matter said.
The government also wants universities and colleges to increasingly use technology to manage their day-to-day operations more efficiently.
According to the Department of Expenditure's (DoE) proposal for 2026-27, reviewed by Mint, the education ministry has been allocated ₹650 crore for the programme, with targets spanning digital learning platforms, research tools, innovation initiatives and institutional governance.
"A key focus of the mission is to expand access to online education through the SWAYAM platform. The ministry aims to develop 390 Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and deliver 2,840 courses during the year," said the first of the two officials cited above, both speaking on condition of anonymity.
"It has set targets of 80 lakh student enrolments, 16 lakh examination registrations and issuance of 12 lakh certificates through SWAYAM," the official added.
Free education
SWAYAM, which stands for Study Webs of Active-learning for Young Aspiring Minds, is a government-run massive open online course platform that offers free educational and skill-based courses spanning class 9 to post-graduation.
Under SWAYAM Plus, which offers industry-oriented courses, the government plans to develop and deliver 40 courses and enrol 1.5 lakh learners.
"The SATHEE (Self-Assessment, Test and Help for Entrance Exams) platform, designed to support competitive examination preparation, is expected to add 105 course modules, with targets of 3 lakh student enrolments, 30,000 examination registrations and issuance of 15,000 certificates," the second official said.
The initiative assumes significance as the Centre seeks to expand the use of digital platforms to improve access to quality higher education, strengthen research capabilities and equip students with industry-relevant skills.
In response to Mint’s query, the education ministry said that the SWAYAM platform offers more than 1,800 high-quality courses each semester with more than 100 highly specialised courses focused entirely on AI, data science, and other emerging technologies.
“Enrolments on Swayam platform surpassed 90 lakh last year. Driven by the ministry’s efforts and student appetite for next-generation courses, the total enrolments are expected to cross a 1 crore mark this year,” it said.
Queries sent to the finance ministry remained unanswered till press time.
Welcoming the government's push to expand digital learning, experts said that the initiative should place greater emphasis on industry-relevant skills and regional language content to maximize its reach and impact.
"It is a great move to improve access. Care should be taken to include the latest industry-oriented and vocation-oriented courses, such as AI skills, and to offer them in local languages. India already has a large pool of teachers who can contribute to this initiative. The ministry should look at bringing them on board as well," said Arjun Mohan, chief executive officer (CEO) of EdStart Startup, a consulting firm, and former CEO of Byju's India and upGrad.
Robotics initiative
To strengthen innovation and digital skills, the ministry plans to cover 100 institutions under the e-Yantra robotics initiative and train 1,000 students. It also plans to organise 4,000 internships, hackathons and workshops under the Free/Libre and Open-Source Software for Education (FOSSEE) initiative, training 1.2 lakh students and faculty members in open-source software.
e-Yantra is an IIT-Bombay initiative, supported by the ministry of education under NMEICT, that promotes hands-on learning in robotics, embedded systems, artificial intelligence, automation and the Internet of Things (IoT) among engineering students and faculty.
The programme also envisages developing 20 simulation-based virtual laboratories benefiting 40,000 students, while adding 150 new virtual experiments, as per the DoE plan.
On the research front, the ministry aims to verify 8 lakh documents through the e-Shodh Shuddhi plagiarism detection platform and integrate 300 institutions with the Indian Research Information Network System (IRINS). The ministry expects these initiatives to benefit 1.8 lakh students, researchers and scholars, while creating 20,000 faculty profiles on the platform, the officials cited earlier said.
"Scale is the easy part of education technology — we've known that for a decade. What's harder, and what these targets don't quite capture, is whether a learner who enrols in week one is still engaged by week eight. Eighty lakh enrolments is a wonderful ambition, and worth celebrating. But the real measure of success will come a year from now, in how many of those learners actually built something, solved something, or walked away able to do what they couldn't before. That's the number worth chasing next and meaningfully so" Anil Srinivasan, founder of KRUU and distinguished professor at Krea University.
Another 40 higher educational institutions are proposed to be integrated with the One Nation One Knowledge (ONOK) platform, with a target of generating 10 million units of digital academic content.
To improve institutional governance, the ministry plans to onboard 30 lakh students and employees onto the Samarth Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform. The initiative is expected to facilitate digital payments and transactions worth ₹1,500 crore while improving administrative efficiency and transparency across higher educational institutions.