More than a dozen foreign universities have already seized the chance to enter the world’s largest and fastest-growing HE system. But in a competitive environment with regulatory complexity, tuition fee strategy will be key to ensuring sustainability and scalability, writes Dr Rahul Choudaha in an opinion piece published in Times Higher Education.
India’s first international university campus admitted students in July 2024. Two years on, 13 universities are competing to attract students, and another seven have officially announced plans for 2027–28 – taking the total to at least 20 by July 2027. To put this in perspective, Dubai and Malaysia, pioneers in building an ecosystem for international campuses, have 37 and 11 campuses respectively.
Tuition Pricing Variations and Risks for International Branch Campuses in India
A defining challenge at this early stage is that while fees charged by IBCs are lower than the cost of studying in their home countries, they are still significantly higher than those charged by Indian institutions. Yet there are few proof points for students and their families to assess whether even these discounted rates offer value for money compared with studying overseas. In the absence of career outcomes data, enrolment becomes a high-stakes shot in the dark, with an even higher perceived investment cost.
In line with regulatory requirements, the credentials awarded must be equivalent to those from the home campus. IBCs are therefore introducing programmes under different names, with different durations and price points. This creates a complicated picture for prospective students and their families to navigate, and a competitive disadvantage for some universities.
Analysis of the 91 programmes (38 postgraduate and 53 undergraduate) offered by all 13 universities for 2026–27 shows that postgraduate programmes run for one year, 18 months or two years. Undergraduate programmes mostly run for three years, but a few run for four.
These longer durations obviously increase the overall price: the average tuition cost of a four-year undergraduate degree, at £46,210 (Rs 59.1 lakh), is fully 52 per cent higher than the average tuition cost of a three-year degree, at £30,320 (Rs 38.8 lakh). For master’s programmes, the difference between one-year (£14,070; Rs 18.0 lakh) and two-year (£24,510; Rs 31.4 lakh) options is even wider, at 74 per cent. And the gaps are even more substantial once the opportunity cost of a second year’s lost income is factored in.
Hence, universities running the longer-duration format, which they have no choice but to offer, risk losing out in recruitment to those offering shorter courses – particularly in these early years, when evidence of career outcomes is lacking and all students have to go on is the ranking of the home institution.