UK universities are aiming to leave their financial woes at home by seeking their fortunes in India, in a higher education version of a gold rush towards a market with more than 40 million students.
The University of Southampton has been first out of the blocks, announcing it is opening in Gurgaon, a satellite city of Delhi, and is now enrolling students for what it calls “the first campus of its kind in India”.
Others are not far behind. Prof Chris Day, Newcastle University’s vice-chancellor, last week told a British Council event in Delhi: “It almost seems that every day at the moment there’s another announcement.”
Day said he was “absolutely convinced” of the need for Newcastle University to open a campus in India, joining the vice-chancellors of Surrey, Coventry and many others said to be looking at plans.
Prof Aarti Srivastava, head of the higher education and professional education department at National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration in Delhi, said foreign universities were not allowed to operate their own campuses in India until 2023, when changes to regulations opened the doors.
“The UK universities are aiming to ride the high tide of demographic bulge in India,” Srivastava said. “Also the cost of living is low in India, therefore the cohort will be attracted to get a foreign degree at a low cost which will impact their employability in the long run.”
UK universities attracted more than 125,000 students from India in 2022-23, but shifting visa regimes and competition from international rivals make those numbers uncertain. By opening branch campuses in India universities can reach an untapped domestic market that is unable to study abroad.
Nick Hillman, director of the UK’s Higher Education Policy Institute, said: “There is so much pent-up demand for this because India is seen as having more potential than anywhere else for the next wave of internationalisation within UK universities.”
Indian students wanting to take a BSc in business management at Southampton’s home campus would pay £24,000 in annual tuition fees, plus hefty visa, travel and accommodation costs.
But from August, the university’s new branch at Gurgaon’s International Tech Park, a special economic zone, will teach the same course for 1.3m rupees a year, about £12,000.
Undergraduate tuition at the University of Delhi, a leading public institution with 250,000 students, costs the equivalent of £2,000. But demand for places is so high there are more than 58,000 colleges and universities, teaching 43 million students. Private universities are rapidly opening, charging fees of £10,000 and more.
The Indian government wants half of young people to enrol in tertiary education, up from 28% in 2021-22, leaving plenty of room for UK universities to enter the market.
Maddalaine Ansell, the British Council’s director of education, said India was “of great importance” to UK higher education for students and academic partnerships.
“We have worked with partners to help the UK sector to respond to recent reforms in Indian higher education, leading to a surge in collaborations. These range from joint and dual PhDs and master’s degrees to the establishment of UK university campuses,” Ansell said.
Prof Max Lu, the University of Surrey’s vice-chancellor, was last week exploring a campus opening next year in Gujarat International Finance Tec (Gift) City in Ahmedabad, a special economic zone offering tax exemptions and profit repatriation for high-ranking foreign universities.
Gift City’s first UK university resident is likely to be Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), which has announced it will offer postgraduate courses there from January next year.
QUB says the new campus will cost £5m-£7m – at a time when the university is seeking voluntary redundancies amid forecasts of a £11m operating deficit.
A QUB spokesperson said: “The investment in Gift City is unrelated to the university’s voluntary severance scheme and it is vital to point out that there will be no compulsory redundancies as part of this process … Projected returns from the Gift investment will be reinvested into core university activities and are a key component in supporting the university’s financial sustainability in the years ahead.”
Jo Grady, general secretary of the University and College Union, said it was “reprehensible” for universities to undertake risky ventures abroad while cutting jobs at home.
“All too often these vanity projects end up losing money or even shutting down,” Grady said. “This reckless mismanagement could not be more at odds with the government’s demand that universities take their civic responsibilities more seriously.”
Source: theguardian.com
