Now the trend of informatization and automation in various aspects of society is developing. Within the framework of this topic, an article was written highlighting the main ideas in the field of intellectual management of higher education institutions. Within the framework of this trend, models of system automation of constituent elements of management and functioning of higher education institutions in conceptual form are proposed. To do this, an analysis of the state of informatization of processes and phenomena in modern institutions of higher education. The main conceptual provisions of modeling of processes and phenomena of higher education institutions are offered in the work. Based on the analysis of the results of creating intelligent systems, which is called "smart objects", as well as the main trends in the construction and use of applied information technology in higher education, the idea of creating a concept of modeling processes and phenomena in higher education. The main purpose of modeling is to combine the information technologies used in higher education and to create an intelligent information system "Smart Higher Education". Using the methods of aggregation and decomposition, the processes of functioning of a higher education institution are represented by a three-level system, in which information technologies of most types of support of the institution are distinguished. A generalized model of educational and methodological support has been developed. Using this model, an example of educational and methodological support of specialty 193 "Geodesy and Land Management" is presented. As a result, a semantic network was developed, built on the basis of models of disciplines of digital knowledge platforms of higher education. Such a network must meet the requirements of educational standards, in particular be isomorphic to the curriculum of the specialty and, ideally, have the property of transitive closure. And in the future the use of methods of decomposition and abstraction, as well as analysis of logical and heuristic models of knowledge representation led to the understanding that to formalize the functioning of higher education it is necessary to use topological formalities, including methods and representation of category theory. This mathematical apparatus will allow to abstract from insignificant and secondary elements of simulated objects and processes. Methods of system analysis, mathematical logic, heuristic methods were used to build models. The basis for formalizing the elements of the knowledge base of the intelligent system "Smart Institution of Higher Education" has been developed.