Imagining the Digital University: Infrastructural Logics and Institutional Futures in the Global South

The article examines how national digital transformation strategies in higher education articulate divergent institutional futures in India, China, and South Africa. A comparative analysis of policy documents from 2013–2024 demonstrates how governance rationalities and infrastructural designs redefine the epistemic role, operational logic, and autonomy of universities. Digital transformation is conceptualized not as technical modernization but as a socio-political project encoding institutional imaginaries and normative frameworks. Three dominant models are identified: the Chinese model is a technocratic centralized strategy with algorithmic monitoring and STEM prioritization; the Indian model is open digital architectures preserving institutional discretion within a federal governance structure; the South African model is flexible decentralization emphasizing equity and epistemic decolonization. These models reveal contradictions between strategic coordination and autonomy, equity and efficiency, infrastructural control and pedagogical reflexivity. The study demonstrates that digital infrastructures determine not only access to education but also academic temporality, agency, and epistemic authority. The proposed understanding of digital transformation as an infrastructural imaginary contributes to critical debates on higher education reform and global governance under conditions of systemic uncertainty.