5 months ago
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Vishwa Bandhu scholarships and fellowships to pull overseas students and faculty, and easing regularisation frameworks to alteration much planetary campuses successful India — including exploring the “campus wrong campus” exemplary — are among the argumentation recommendations made by the NITI Aayog arsenic portion of a roadworthy representation for the “internationalisation” of higher acquisition successful India. The nationalist argumentation deliberation vessel has besides projected mounting up an Erasmus+-like programme, updated curricula, and expanding the criteria of the NIRF rankings to execute goals acceptable retired successful the National Education Policy 2020.
The NITI Aayog connected Monday (December 22, 2025) released a study titled “Internationalisation of Higher Education successful India: Prospects, Potential, and Policy Recommendations”, which recommended 22 specified argumentation interventions successful bid to woody with the “imbalance betwixt inbound and outbound pupil mobility”. The study, conducted implicit the past year, noted that successful 2024, for each planetary pupil who came to India to study, 28 Indian students went overseas for higher education.
This study comes a week aft the Union authorities introduced the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025, to overhaul India’s higher acquisition regulatory framework, nether which the projected Standards Council (Manak Parishad) has been fixed a circumstantial mandate to plan “non-binding frameworks” for the “internationalisation” of higher acquisition successful the country.
The NITI Aayog study has made a big of recommendations successful the areas of strategy, regulation, branding, communications, and outreach, and program and culture. Noting that India “requires an summation successful the inflow of planetary students” to go a “global destination” for higher acquisition and research, the study besides uses antithetic forecasting methods to estimation that by 2047, India could person arsenic galore arsenic 7.89 lakh to 11 lakh planetary students. As of 2022, India was hosting adjacent to 47,000 planetary students successful its higher acquisition institutions.
Since 2001, the fig of planetary students coming to India has accrued by 518%, the study noted, adding that depending connected the strength of the internationalisation that takes place, the fig of inbound overseas students tin summation up to 11 lakh by 2047.
Some of the recommendations for internationalisation made successful the NITI Aayog study are mounting up a Bharat Vidya Kosh arsenic a nationalist probe sovereign wealthiness money (suggesting a $10 cardinal corpus, of which 50% tin beryllium raised from diaspora and philanthropy portion the Centre matches this magnitude with different 50%); a Vishwa Bandhu assistance to pull overseas students; a Vishwa Bandhu fellowship to pull overseas probe endowment and faculty; and the mounting up of Bharat ki AAN (Alumni Ambassador Network) to leverage diaspora Indians who person studied astatine apical India universities into acting arsenic ambassadors for Indian higher education.
The argumentation little prepared based connected this survey goes connected to mention Europe’s Erasmus+ Programme to suggest the instauration of a “multilateral world mobility framework” tailored to circumstantial state groupings similar ASEAN, BRICS, BIMSTEC, etc., which could beryllium called the “Tagore framework”, named aft Asia’s archetypal Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore.
It besides suggested regulatory interventions, including making the introduction and exit of overseas students, faculty, and probe endowment easier, done initiatives similar providing a fast-track tenure pathway for overseas faculty, making definite their salaries are competitory with planetary benchmarks, and creating a single-window clearance strategy for each Visa needs, slope accounts, taxation IDs, lodging allotment, etc.
Other interventions suggested included expanding the parameters utilized successful the NIRF rankings to person sub-parameters similar “Outreach and Inclusivity” oregon having a “globalisation and Partnerships” class to measurement institutes with.
At the motorboat of the report, NITI Aayog officials said that this work was the effect of efforts that person been nether mode for a twelvemonth now, including an online survey of 160 Indian institutions, cardinal informant interviews with 30 institutions crossed 16 countries, a National Workshop that was held astatine IIT Madras, and a Transnational Education Roundtable successful the United Kingdom, wherever India excessively was represented.
In the people of the study, the study recovered that determination were terrible economical and geopolitical implications of the existent imbalance successful outbound and inbound planetary students, observing that successful the past decade, determination had been a 2,000% summation successful outward remittances nether the RBI’s liberalised remittance scheme.
It added that Indian students’ overseas tuition and surviving expenses were projected to scope ₹6.2 lakh crore by 2025, representing astir 2% of the country’s GDP, further noting that Indian students’ expenditure connected higher acquisition overseas was estimated to beryllium astir 75% of India’s wide commercialized shortage successful fiscal twelvemonth 2024-25.
The study besides noted that the 1:28 ratio of inbound to outbound planetary students represented a “significant encephalon drain” for India, noting that the “concentration” of 8.5 lakh (out of full 13.5 lakh) India’s outbound students successful “high-income strategical big countries” specified arsenic the United States of America, United Kingdom, and Australia “risks India’s competitory positioning successful the world”, further noting that implicit 16 lakh radical had renounced Indian citizenship successful since 2011.
Survey findings from the survey further noted that arsenic precocious arsenic 41% of surveyed institutes successful the state agreed that a important situation to attracting students to India was “limited scholarships and fiscal aid”, whereas astir 30% of institutes reported agreeing that overseas “perception of acquisition quality” successful India was different challenge. Other challenges faced by Indian institutes were inadequate international facilities, constricted programme offerings, insufficient planetary pupil enactment and taste adaptation concerns.
