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.

This opportunity to gain a foothold in the world’s largest and fastest-growing higher education system has aligned neatly with foreign universities’ need to de-risk against declining international student recruitment at home and Indian students’ tightening employment and immigration prospects in leading study destinations, compounded by the rising cost of study as the rupee weakens.

However, success is not guaranteed. These campuses face real strategic choices as they find their footing within a regulatory and competitive environment that is still taking shape despite the fact that policy efforts to bring foreign universities to India are nearly two decades old. As , the Union Cabinet cleared a bill to regulate the entry, operations and quality of foreign educational institutions in 2007, but it sat mired in political debate until the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 set the foundation for turning policy intent into regulatory action.

Provided that they are ranked in the global top 500, overseas universities can now enter India under two broad frameworks. One, issued by the country’s International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA), applies specifically for the GIFT City special economic zone, where tax breaks are available. This route tends to be swifter, but as well as obliging the university to establish its outpost in a still-developing location near Ahmedabad in the western state of Gujarat, it also comes with programmatic constraints: a focus on finance and STEM-related fields.

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Elke Scholiers/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The framework issued by the University Grants Commission (UGC) offers more programmatic flexibility – although STEM courses are still preferred – and the opportunity to set up in any city, limited only by the economics of running a campus. Ten of the 13 universities admitting students today have taken this route; five of these are in Mumbai and three in Bengaluru.

In principle, they ought to be very attractive to students, offering a global degree priced at about a third (36 per cent) of the cost of studying at the home or parent campus. However, even though all 13 universities combined have an intake capacity of for 2026–27, only about half of those seats are likely to be filled this year. UNSW Sydney, the highest-ranked of all IBCs operating in India, started its founding class with only 60 students across four courses, .

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Part of the explanation is certainly that several campuses received regulatory approval late in the admissions cycle. While the UGC allowed universities to conduct outreach, accept applications and extend offers based on a letter of intent issued months ago, they were unable to accept deposits or fees from students until receiving their formal letter of approval. Nevertheless, such low enrolment numbers are potentially worrying.

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A defining challenge of this early stage is that while the fees charged by the international branch campuses (IBCs) are lower than for studying in their home countries, they are still a lot more than those charged by Indian institutions. Our research found that average first-year undergraduate fees at the 11 foreign universities offering undergraduate programmes (two offer only postgraduate programmes)Ìýare more than twice those of Tier 1 private universities in India. Yet there are few proof-points for students and their families considering whether even these discounted rates offer value for money compared with studying overseas.

A unique feature of the Indian landscape is that campus job placement records and starting salaries serve as the primary proxy for perceived institutional quality. In the absence of such data, enrolment is considered a high-stakes shot in the dark. And while every university offers some form of need- or merit-based scholarship, it remains unclear how many scholarships are actually available – making it difficult to get a clear read on net tuition pricing.

In line with the principle that credentials awarded must be equivalent to those from the home campus, IBCs are required by Indian regulations to offer the same programmes as their home campuses. Hence, the IBCs are all introducing programmes under different names, with different durations as well as price points, making for a complicated picture for would-be students and their families to navigate.

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Average total tuition fee by programme duration (undergraduate versus postgraduate)

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Rahul Choudaha (2026). The Landscape of International University Campuses in India. DrEducation.com

(38 postgraduate and 53 undergraduate) offered by all 13 universities shows that the average tuition fee of undergraduate programmes is nearly £10,390 (Rs 13.3 lakh), ranging from £5,860 (Rs 7.5 lakh) to £13,980 (Rs 17.9 lakh). For postgraduate programmes, the annual average is £13,440 (Rs 17.2 lakh), ranging from £9,770 (Rs 12.5 lakh) to £18,050 (Rs 23.1 lakh).

This variation in annual tuition fee is compounded by the differences in programme duration. 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 hike up 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 in recruitment terms 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.

But universities offering shorter-duration programmes face a different regulatory and competitive challenge. Through the NEP and the UGC’s credit and curriculum framework for undergraduate programmes, the government has clearly signalled a preference for four-year undergraduate degrees. This means that as the market resets around the four-year model, universities still offering three-year degrees risk further muddying perceptions among students and parents, who may read the shorter format as carrying some unstated downside.

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Given that the regulations allow full flexibility in determining tuition pricing and market forces clearly show that premium pricing comes with higher expectations and lower tolerance for risk, IBCs should recalibrate their pricing models with a clear, data-informed view of the competitive Indian landscape. If they don’t, they risk missing out on student enrolment in terms of both quality and quantity – undermining campus scalability and long-term sustainability.

Rahul Choudaha is managing director of DrEducation Research. He advises, writes and presents on global higher education trends and insights with a focus on international campuses and student mobility.

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