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Key points
- Australian universities are hoping to set up campuses in India to tap into the country’s enormous education market.
- Education Minister Jason Clare said India’s target to have 50 per cent of young people enrolled in higher education by 2035 is a “great opportunity” for Australia.
- Western Sydney University is already planning on opening a campus in Bengaluru in southern India.
Universities are stepping up plans to tap the enormous potential of India’s student market by setting up campuses in the country, as India closes the gap on China as the linchpin of Australia’s multibillion-dollar international education industry.
But expansion into India is unlikely to dampen universities’ demand for high-fee-paying international students to study at their Australian campuses, with some migration experts now warning of mounting pressures on the broader migration system as enrolment figures hit close to pre-pandemic highs.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare will lead a delegation of university executives to India on Sunday, his second such trip this year following one in March, in a bid to cement Australia’s role in educating Indian students in their home country by setting up campuses where they can complete undergraduate and post graduate degrees.
Education Minister Jason Clare (left) with Western Sydney University vice chancellor Barney Glover and Indian Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan in Sydney last year.
As part of the delegation, Western Sydney University is poised to announce its ambition of opening a campus in Bengaluru in southern India, amid hopes that the Modi government’s ground-breaking regulations to greenlight the entry of foreign universities will soon be finalised.
In an interview ahead of the trip, Clare said India’s national education policy – which sets an ambitious target of 50 per cent of young people enrolled in higher education by 2035 – represented a “great opportunity” for Australia.
“The key message here is international education isn’t a one-way street. It’s not just about students coming here. It’s about Australian universities going to the world because the truth is most young people can’t afford to come to Australia to study for a uni degree. We can take this export industry to them,” Clare said.
Setting up campuses overseas is not a novel concept. RMIT has been operating in Vietnam for 20 years, James Cook University has a campus in Singapore, Monash University has campuses in Indonesia and Malaysia, and WSU is setting up shop in Surabaya, Indonesia, to name a few.
WSU is following in the footsteps of Deakin and Wollongong universities which earlier this year became the first two foreign institutions to set up in India within the Gujarat GIFT city district, a special economic zone subject to different regulations.
The push into India comes as the Australian government seeks increasingly close ties with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, underpinned by shared concerns about China’s rise, with education a central pillar of the relationship. Clare will hold bilateral talks with Indian counterpart Shri Dharmendra Pradhan as part of the delegation, building on the deal struck in March to mutually recognise qualifications obtained in both countries.
WSU vice-chancellor Barney Glover said a key motivation for establishing a campus in India was a desire to cement the university’s brand in the country and entice more students to study onshore in Australia.
“That’s really what we’re hoping to achieve – more Indian students studying literally in Australia as well as having a very significant presence in India. It also gives us a base for our collaborative research and outreach in India,” Glover said.
He said WSU’s Indian campus, if approved by the country’s regulators, would focus on teaching STEM degrees, employ a mix of local and Australian academics, and would aim to grow enrolments to over 1000 students within the first five years.
Deakin University vice chancellor Iain Martin, who will accompany Clare on a tour of the uni’s soon-to-be-completed campus while in Gujarat, said India was now “at least as important for the university sector as the China relationship”.
“They are going through a huge transformation as a nation and how they think about the future for India. As a consequence of that, the place of education and skills development has grown enormously in the minds of the Indian government and the Indian population,” he said.
Separately, the Innovative Research Universities group, whose members include WSU, La Trobe and Flinders, have foreshadowed plans to use the delegation to announce their interest in collaborating on ways to deliver education in India.
“What we are interested in is what would it look like for a group of universities to work together, not to do more recruitment of students coming into Australia, but to actually operate in India and deliver education in India together as a group,” executive director Paul Harris said.
However, even with this boost, overseas campuses represent a tiny fraction of Australia’s $40 billion-plus broader international education system. China remains the largest source country for international students currently in Australia, but demand from Indian students is now outpacing the demand from Chinese students. More than 102,000 student visas were granted to Indian students in the 2022-23 financial year, compared to 98,000 visas for Chinese students, with a spike in VET course enrolments driving a lot of the increase.
But this post-pandemic boom has also been marred by significant fraud issues. Earlier this year, a number of universities banned applications from certain Indian states citing high attrition rates, while the federal government cracked down on visa loophole issues that allowed overseas students to abandon university courses for cheap private colleges so they could work instead of study.
Dr Abul Rizvi, a former deputy secretary in the Department of Immigration, said the surge in overseas students had helped drive record levels of net migration, but there were not enough places in the migration program for those seeking permanent residency.
“By early 2024, we will have over a million people in Australia on a student visa, temporary graduate visa or former students on a COVID visa. By far the largest nationality group is from India,” Rizvi said.
“A large number of those students will be disappointed and they will be in limbo for a very long time.”
The Grattan Institute raised similar concerns in a report released last month, noting that Australia was now on track to double the number of people on temporary graduate visas to 370,000 by 2030, which it said would add to population pressures in areas like housing.
On this issue, Clare said he would not pre-empt the reforms to the country’s migration system soon to be announced by Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil, but stressed that in-country education was a “great example of the way international education can work in the future and that’s training Indian students in India”.
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