The high cost of building research infrastructure, limited demand for research-oriented programmes, and the need for sustained funding could constrain the ability of these campuses to develop research-intensive institutions, they said.
Several foreign universities entering India have strong research credentials in the Quacquarelli Symonds rankings, but their India campuses are initially focused largely on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.
The entry of foreign universities has been positioned as a way to bring international academic expertise and research collaborations to India, alongside expanding access to international degrees.
Under the University Grants Commission’s regulations, foreign universities can establish campuses in India and offer certificate, diploma, degree, and research programmes, subject to regulatory approval and requirements related to academic and physical infrastructure.
However, Manindra Agrawal, director at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, told Business Standard that foreign campuses were unlikely to replicate the research ecosystem of established Indian institutions, particularly given the financial requirements of research-intensive universities.
“No research-focused university has come to India so far. Research-focused universities will always run at a loss, so they need government support or donor backing to keep running. For instance, Harvard will not come here and lose money; it would rather spend in the US. Universities coming here are cost-neutral and cannot support research,” Agrawal said.
He added that foreign universities were likely to complement rather than compete with India’s established research institutions.
Syed Sultan Ahmed, chairperson of The Association of International Schools of India, said demand for foreign universities was primarily for employable degrees rather than research, making it difficult to build research ecosystems at new campuses. “Foreign universities are coming into India due to demand for employable degrees from students. Most Indian students go to colleges to get a valuable degree that will lead to a job, so the demand itself is not for research. The economics of it will decide what the institutions offer since these are private universities, and setting up a campus in a new country is a major investment, requiring huge capital expenditure,” Ahmed observed.
He added that whether their campuses eventually offer PhD programmes would be a key indicator of whether they are building research capabilities in India rather than primarily providing undergraduate and postgraduate degrees.
Several foreign universities have expressed plans to build research capabilities in India through collaborations, research centres, and partnerships with Indian institutions. However, none of the foreign university campuses currently operating or formally announced in India have announced a standalone PhD programme.
“There are two sides to an institute — teaching and research. It’s easier to import teaching, but to bring research and the entire ecosystem somewhere is difficult. Research requires government grants as well as industry participation, so it’s difficult to transplant that somewhere else,” Ahmed said.
Shantanu Rooj, founder and chief executive officer of TeamLease EdTech, said the impact of foreign campuses in the near term was likely to be “more catalytic than transformational”. The programmes announced so far also point towards a predominantly teaching-led model, with proposed offerings concentrated in areas such as business, finance, artificial intelligence, data science, cybersecurity, and software engineering, Rooj said.
Building a research-intensive institution, however, would require a different financial and academic model, Rooj said. “Tuition-led campus economics alone are unlikely to create research-intensive universities quickly,” he said, adding that laboratories, doctoral and postdoctoral ecosystems, long-duration grants, and sustained faculty investment would be needed.
Business Standard had earlier reported that foreign universities setting up campuses in India would build permanent local faculty teams, with Victoria University planning to recruit experienced academics from top Indian institutions and the University of Wollongong saying most new appointments would be India-based academics, including those from the Indian higher education sector.
Agrawal said attracting top research faculty could also prove difficult, as researchers at institutions such as the IITs have access to established research ecosystems and may not want to move to campuses without a comparable research focus.
Rooj added that research faculty choose institutions based on the strength of their research ecosystem rather than salaries alone. “Institutions such as India’s established IITs and research universities already possess laboratories, PhD pipelines, collaborators, and institutional research cultures built over decades. Foreign campuses are therefore more likely initially to expand competition and enable joint or mobile faculty models than simply pull researchers away from established Indian institutions,” Rooj said.
Experts agree that the stronger opportunity for foreign universities may lie in collaborating with established Indian institutions rather than attempting to replicate their research ecosystems in India.
“Foreign universities can establish relationships with credible Indian universities. They can collaborate and partner for research work,” Ahmed said.
- High cost of building infra, limited demand for research-oriented programmes could constrain development of research-intensive institutions
- Foreign universities entering India are initially focused on academic programmes
- The entry of foreign universities has been positioned as a way to bring international academic expertise
- These universities have expressed plans to build research capabilities through collaborations
