Degrees Without Departures

On a late March morning this year, inside the gleaming towers of Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (better known as GIFT City), a cohort of students walked across a stage to collect degrees from Deakin University. They had never left India. Yet the parchment in their hands was unmistakably Australian.

It was a milestone moment: the inaugural graduation of an international branch campus on Indian soil. Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendrabhai Patel called it an opportunity “to present India’s transformation into a global knowledge centre before the world”, hinting at how Australian universities, long accustomed to welcoming Indian students to their shores, are now racing to build campuses in the world’s most populous nation.

Deakin University, which has been present in India since 1994 and counts partnerships with Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore and Indian School of Business among its pre-existing connections, is equally clear-eyed about where it fits within GIFT City’s larger design. “Whoever has chosen to be part of the GIFT City ecosystem will primarily drive fin-tech and related [or allied] courses,” says Deepak Bajaj, Academic and Campus Director at Deakin’s GIFT City campus.

What is striking about both campuses is how consciously they position themselves not as foreign outposts but as embedded nodes in the Indian ecosystem. “When we came to GIFT City, the intention was not to be recognised as foreigners. We wanted to be the Bata of universities, and blend in with the local ecosystem,” says Dr Nimay Kalyani. The bigger vision, as he describes it, is of University of Wollongong evolving into a confluence, where “government organisations, the industry sector of India, the industry sector of Australia and the education systems of India and Australia are all converging into one.”

For Deakin University, a big factor in attracting students to their India campus is the value proposition. “Even as a global university, you have to localise yourself… The cost of an international degree from India is roughly one third of the equivalent programme in Australia, accounting for the tuition fees and the cost of living,” Deepak Bajaj explains to DOT.in.

Beyond bricks and mortar, the Australia-India education relationship runs far deeper. Australian National University partners with Indian Institute of Science and Indian Institute of Technology Madras on dual PhDs; the University of Melbourne anchors the Melbourne India Postgraduate Academy across multiple IITs; Monash University co-runs the IIT Bombay Research Academy; RMIT University collaborates with Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani; and the University of Queensland is linked with Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Australian campuses in India may be new, but the intellectual ties are not.

The old narrative of brain drain — of India’s brightest packing their bags for Down Under — is being quietly, systematically replaced. A student who once needed a visa, a flight and close to a crore of rupees to access an Australian degree can now walk into one on Indian soil. What is fast emerging is something far more interesting: the world’s most ambitious education market and one of the world’s most respected education exporters discovering that they are better together when they build in the same place, not in opposite directions.