A reality check on Indian ambition for internationalising higher education Premium

Explore India's ambition to become a global education hub and the challenges it faces in internationalising higher education.

Perhaps surprisingly, international higher education, including branch campuses, student mobility, degree franchising, and related issues, has suddenly become big news in India. The country wants to be a major player. This heightened attention comes at a time when traditional destination countries are changing their approach to Indian students.

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom has emerged as the most aggressive player in establishing physical presence in India, with the largest pipeline of branch campuses in the country. Several prestigious U.K. institutions — including Queen’s University Belfast, Bristol, Liverpool, York, Aberdeen, and Lancaster — have formally committed to opening Indian campuses, and the University of Southampton just opened a campus in the Delhi region. Curiously, several of the main host countries are hoping to establish beachheads in India at the same time they are turning Indian students away.

It is in this context that two influential reports have recently appeared — “Internationalisation of higher education in India: potential and policy recommendations” from NITI Aayog and the U.K.’s international education strategy from the British government must be critically assessed. The latter gained momentum as it followed a high-profile visit of U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and a group of eager British Vice-Chancellors to India last year, moving this niche topic to a wider discussion and policy relevance. India’s ambition to establish itself as an education hub by hosting foreign campuses reflects these shifting dynamics, and the NITI Aayog report is, therefore, worth examining.

There has hardly been a more unstable period for higher education globally in the past century. For much of the Anglophone world, there is a strong reaction against immigration, largely because of populism and right-wing nationalism. The U.S. has created visa bottlenecks and routinely cancels visas. Other U.S. policies are similarly negative — such as charging $100,000 for some immigration categories. These and other policies are symptomatic of the Trump administration’s xenophobia and incoherence. The U.K., Canada, and Australia are cutting back on the number of international students in country — preferring to educate them (and collect tuition fees) in their home countries on branch campuses and franchised degrees and twinning arrangements. Canadian international student numbers have declined to 700,000 from over 1 million in 2024. In the Netherlands, Germany, and other European countries, there has been a reaction against offering English-medium degrees. Online degree programmes are also popular — these are offered globally, and tuition payments do not mean student mobility.

It is no surprise that all aspects of internationalisation — branch campuses, twinning, and many others are now priorities in a variety of new players in the Global South. Transnational higher education programme delivery through branch campuses are now strategic priorities for many countries in Asia. For instance, Malaysia has become a major higher education hub in Southeast Asia. Educity Iskandar (near Johor, Malaysia) has campuses of a half-dozen British universities, thus becoming a competitor for India. Another competitor is the UAE with around 40 international branch campuses, including branches of Indian institutions such as Manipal, BITS Pilani, IIT Delhi, Symbiosis International University, and IIM Ahmedabad, among others. China is a special case — a large country with a strong higher education system, China is beginning to focus on internationalisation, providing scholarships to international students, establishing branch campuses outside China as for example, a large branch in Malaysia, Xiamen University Malaysia, and exploring possibilities in Africa, the Gulf, the U.K., and the U.S. China currently has 11 international branch campuses that operate in partnerships with Chinese host institutions. These developments make it clear that India’s branch campus strategy will face stiff competition. Education hubs in Asia and the Gulf are already well-established, offering both regulatory flexibility and strong infrastructure support — the impact of the current Gulf conflict on higher education is unclear.

The sad fact is the many students who go abroad for study do not intend to return home. This traditionally has been true for many of the “best and brightest” (just look at the large number of Indians who are tech moguls in the U.S.) as well as workers in pharmacies and restaurants. Massive numbers of Chinese students have become part of the diaspora — though return rates have increased in recent years partly due to Chinese government programmes but mainly because of economic challenges and xenophobia in host countries. At present, some of the largest increases in international student mobility are from Nepal and Bangladesh — due mainly to dire economic circumstances and political uncertainty in those countries. It would be unrealistic to expect the emigration motivation to disappear, including for India, though most of the destination countries have become significantly less friendly to immigrants.