One year in India: How the first foreign university campuses are shaping up

The first two foreign universities to set up campuses in India have admitted a handful of students but plan to expand offerings as GIFT City prepares for more universities to join them

- Sheena Sachdeva

In the first year of their operations in India, University of Wollongong (UoW) and Deakin University together managed to admit less than 60 students between them – Deakin, 43 and UoW, nine. According to Deakin’s David Das, head of campus operations, even this was a success. They were expecting 15-20, he said.

UoW and Deakin University, both top-ranked Australian public universities, are the first two foreign institutions to set up campuses and offer degrees in India. They were announced with massive fanfare in 2022, launched their first programmes in 2024 and in October, Deakin at least will see its first batch graduate and, their administrators hope, find jobs in the financial corporations whose offices surround them in GIFT City.

Experience of the first foreign campuses in India is defined and controlled almost entirely by GIFT City. The sprawling 886-acre Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) on the banks of the Sabarmati, in Gandhinagar, was set up to facilitate trade in foreign currency within India. Here, the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA), a central regulatory body for the sector headquartered in GIFT City, is all-powerful. The university centres are within the 256 acres of GIFT City that are allotted to the GIFT Special Economic Zone.

It is currently marked out by a collection of massive glass-encrusted buildings and other under-construction structures, jutting up from flat, featureless land, stripped bare of all vegetation.

The offshore campuses are not so much campuses as single-floor setups in high-rise office buildings. UoW, for example, occupies the sixth floor of Pragya II Building and has asset management and law firms, international banks, technology companies and consultancies in the floors above and below. Deakin shares the building with a co-working space on the ground floor. The atmosphere, in consequence, is less academic and more big-corporation.