UPDATE: The Community Source Kuali Student System is now in development. See www.kuali.org for details.

---------- 2006 History ------------

Should colleges and universities pool their resources, intellectual property, wisdom, and insights to create a next generation, open source Student Services System (SSS)? That question emerged in 2005 as a serious point of discussion at conferences and on the "ERP" and now "Student" discussion lists at www.osnext.org (create an account there an join the Student site to get on the listserv). The focus will be on a modular system based on a services-oriented architecture and a rethinking of how to best provision student services for the coming years.

The success of the Sakai Project for teaching and learning and the good progress and promise of the Kuali Project for administrative systems, starting with Financial Systems, has given higher education the confidence to consider a Student System project.

In January of 2006, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded a small planning grant to assess higher ed's interest in an open source student system. The planning grant will assess if the community source model of pooling investment, running a discipled project, sharing the resulting software under an open license, and developing a self-sustaining community can be achieved for a modular student system.

Read the Final Report (PDF Version ) of the planning grant assessment.