International Journal of Management Research and Social Science (IJMRSS) ISSN 2394-6407(Print) Volume 7, Issue 4, October – December 2020 ISSN 2394-6415(Online) 89 DOI: 10.30726/ijmrss/v7.i4.2020.74016 The Role of Biometrics in Higher Education Preeti Gupta *1 , Udai Pratap Singh #2 1 UGC NET, Ph.D. Research Scholar, Department of Anthropology, University of Lucknow, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India. 2 Professor and former Head, Department of Anthropology, University of Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India 1 preetigupta30jan@gmail.com, 2 drudaipratapsingh64@gmail.com Abstract — The higher education system in India has developed in a remarkable way, particularly during the post- independence phase, to become one of the largest systems of its kind in the world. Education plays an essential role in our lives and when it comes to higher learning institutes, i.e. colleges and universities. It is very important to attend each and every class for students and teachers. Old fashioned college attendance is not quite sufficient today to keep track on students and faculty member. Biometric attendance system is a perfect technology to ensure the accuracy of attendance and is useful to the ones who deal with large number of students, teachers and employees. Biometric attendance machine captures unique physical feature such as iris, face or fingerprint pattern and sometimes, for identity confirmation your voice is used as a records and allows you to perform something that you are endorsed to do. Educational institutions and organisations are implementing biometric systems to improve the overall infrastructure. The requirement for biometrics systems is already widespread owing to the stable digital infrastructure. This paper is an attempt to highlight the biometric attendance system for higher education. It focuses on a system for developing biometric attendance. This system allows us to speed up the method of taking attendance and to save our valuable teaching time. Several students bunk classes but manage their attendance with the help of their friends and classmates. With the help of biometric attendance system bunking classes have become tricky for the students and faculty members. Advantages of biometrics attendance system in higher education are discussed in this discourse. Keywords — Biometrics; Higher Education; Attendance; Students; Faculty Member. 1. Introduction Education plays a most important role in our lives and when it comes to higher learning, such as colleges and universities, it is essential to attend each and every class for students to not only learn the entire syllabus, but in the case for most higher institutes. The more classes you attend, the greater the chance of being able to sit for your final exams, which in return establishes your final grade for graduation and post-graduation. The conventional and common way of taking attendance is by using pen and paper manually which is a fruitless and tedious process. This mode of taking attendance will acquire time lost instead of delivering lecture effectively mainly if the population of a class is huge. The new technology rapidly evolves biometrics system. Biometrics is hitting the big time in the education sector. Biometrics stands for Greek word ‘bio’ means life and ‘metrics’ means to measure. Biometrics is an useful technique in order to witness and monitor time attendance, which will prove to be very valuable for the faculty to observe students and make sure that not only will the rate of attendance rise up, but also productivity and positive outcome in a student’s overall assessment as well. Biometric systems are automated methods of recognizing or verifying the living person identity on the basis of some physiological characteristics, like face pattern, fingerprint, iris and hand, or some aspects of behavior, like keystroke patterns, signature and voice. In recent years biometrics system is ability to digitize, data is stored and retrieve various biometrics techniques have them processed by computers. Identity validation becomes a difficult task when it has to be automated with high correctness and hence with low chance of break-ins and reliable non-repudiation. The user should not be able to deny having carried out the transaction and inconvenienced as little as possible, that makes the task more difficult. In biometrics, there are two distinct authentication processes and they are, 1.1. Verification It is based on an exclusive identifier which singles out a particular person (e.g. an ID number) and that individual’s biometrics. It is based on a combination of authentication modes. 1.2. Identification It is based only on biometric dimensions. It compares these dimensions to the entire record of enrolled individuals instead of just a single record chosen by some identifier (Bolle, R. M. and Miller, B. et al., 2004, 1994). 2. Functioning of Biometrics  Record students and faculty member’s Biometric attendance system.