Develop Higher Education Hubs to Attract International Students
The country needs to streamline administrative procedures to enable the seamless movement of students, faculty, and institutions across borders
Chennai: India should develop regional higher education hubs focused on Science, Engineering, Arts, Maths, Management, Medicine (STEAM 3) sectors to attract international students, finds Niti Aayog. It should also establish a National Research Sovereign Wealth Impact Fund for higher education and skilling.
The STEAM 3 education hubs should serve as education-led regional innovation ecosystems through structured collaboration among universities, industry, R&D labs, local governments, and society.
The government can also replicate the GIFT City approach by creating global higher education, research and innovation hubs based on strengths of state/regional ecosystems. It can provide special incentives and policy/regulatory enablers to establish high potential Indian and international universities in these clusters and create international innovation and entrepreneurship sub-clusters via partnerships between Indian and global Higher Education Institutions. These partnerships should institutionalize international innovation centres with shared IP policies, cross-border mentoring networks, and funding/financing access.
The government also should align these hubs with National Missions by strategically positioning them with Digital India, Startup India, Aatmanirbhar Bharat, Make in India, and Gati Shakti. It can leverage existing sectoral expertise available in existing innovation clusters like fintech in GIFT City, biotech in Hyderabad, and AI in Bengaluru.
The country needs to streamline administrative procedures to enable the seamless movement of students, faculty, and institutions across borders. This includes simplifying visa processes, reducing documentation burdens, and addressing regulatory bottlenecks that impede international collaborations and academic mobility.
Ensuring transparent and consistent recognition of foreign qualifications is critical for academic mobility, employability and institutional credibility. The process of international degree recognition in India involves multiple regulatory bodies/agencies. This creates inconsistencies and makes the process complex.
To address this, the government should establish a central equivalence architecture for professional and non-professional degrees with discipline-wise protocols and statutory clarity.
A multilateral academic mobility framework should be created tailored for regions such as ASEAN, BIMSTEC, BRICS, or any others. Dialogues may be initiated to develop multilateral agreements enabling systematic student and faculty exchanges including PhD and postdoctoral levels. The framework could also be named after Rabindranath Tagore and called the ‘Tagore Framework’.
The government should establish a National Research Sovereign Wealth Impact Fund Bharat Vidya Kosh a diaspora led, government matched public trust fund with a sovereign wealth fund-like architecture to finance research, innovation, and capacity building in Indian higher education and skilling. The government should develop country/region-specific strategies for attracting global students and leverage strategic partnerships with digital platforms and education fairs to execute focused marketing campaigns.