Smart Universities and Digital Transformation: A Review of Concepts, Technologies, and Institutional Models

Smart universities are becoming more common as digital systems move from back-office support to the infrastructure that shapes teaching, student services, estates, and governance. This chapter reviews how “smart university” is defined, the technology stack that typically enables it, and the institutional models that follow when cross-domain data integration and analytics become routine. Drawing on research on digital transformation, smart campuses, learning analytics, datafication, and platformization, it argues that smartness is not a technical endpoint but a socio-technical settlement about power, decision rights, and legitimacy. Evidence is strongest on architectures and pilot initiatives, but thinner on long-term outcomes, hidden costs (cybersecurity, maintenance, staff workload), and lived experience (consent, surveillance, contestability). The chapter maps a layered stack (identity and access, integration, cloud, IoT, analytics/AI, and credential infrastructure) and contrasts four models: the optimized campus, the datafied governance university, the platform-integrated university, and the hybrid network university. It closes with practical conditions for “acceptable smartness” and a focused research agenda on governance design, equity effects, vendor dependence, and evaluation methods that go beyond marketing claims.