Welcoming new foreign university campuses across India is being presented as a quick-fix for addressing the education quantity-quality gap in India.
At the heart of this policy idea lies a fundamental flaw of access, making this yet another case for making the policy-system appeal to the needs of a narrower elite, leaving behind the vast majority of Indian students who can barely afford the rising costs of higher education. This is happening amidst amidst growing privatisation and regressive weakening of public institutions across India.
On closer examination, the assumption that foreign universities will enhance the higher education landscape is deeply misguided.
Source: AISHE report.
India’s higher education system is already at a critical juncture if we look at the school enrolment rate released by the World Bank. One can notice here how in 2023 Indian students were only at 33% compared to 75% in China and 60% in Brazil (2022). India’s performance in access to higher education, in terms of enrolment rates is much worse compared to other emerging countries, at similar per-capita-income.
On social classification, gross enrolment ratios are worse for marginalised communities across India where they are at just 25.9% for those in the Scheduled Castes and just 21.2% for those in the Scheduled Tribes. If the majority of India’s youth is already unable to access (from perspectives of approachability, affordability, availability) existing institutions, it is bizarre to expect foreign universities to address these core issues as their fee structures rival those of the most expensive domestic institutions.
Spatial gaps in rural-urban access pillars are not even a consideration for foreign universities setting up campuses, with their clear bias towards urban metropolises where willingness to pay for expensive higher education amongst the elite is most deeply concentrated.
Campuses set up by foreign universities in India will not cater to the millions of students struggling to access higher education but rather to a niche segment of wealthy families who can afford exorbitant tuition fees.
At present, this author estimates that the cost of higher education in public universities ranges between Rs 10,000 and Rs 50,000 per year. However, in contrast foreign universities are expected to charge anywhere between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 50 lakh per year which is an amount that puts them entirely out of reach for the lower and middle class.
All this comes at a time when Indian households are already burdened with rising debt. The Household Consumption Expenditure survey 2023-24 pointed out that families are increasingly taking loans just to meet the daily expenses, covering essentials like healthcare, education and housing.
How can a country where people struggle to afford the most basic higher education, justify the presence of institutions that charge exorbitant fees in urban areas with no obligation to provide affirmative action, diverse representation nor subsidies, nor adequate support for marginalised communities?
There is an overwhelming dependence on government universities which currently accommodate nearly 73.7% of total enrolment. This is a stark reminder that most students rely on subsidised education.
States like Bihar which is at 17.1% and Jharkhand which is at 18.6% at enrolment will see no tangible benefits from these developments. Instead, what it will do is in fact deepen the commercialisation of higher education and reinforce existing inequalities.
A policy of profit, not progress
Unlike domestic institutions which operate with a closer understanding of regional disparities, socio-economic conditions and diverse workforce demands, foreign universities entering the Indian market are primarily motivated by financial gain. They see India not as a land of academic transformation but as an untapped consumer base.
India is already grappling with an acute skills deficit which makes it imperative to align higher education with employability. When we observe the numbers they tell a worrisome story. India’s overall employability rate which is the proportion of individuals within a specific population (like graduates) stands at just 54.81% which means nearly half of the workforce lacks the necessary skills to be employable.
Despite numerous government-led skill development programmes, only 41% of ITI graduates and a mere 27% of Polytechnic graduates meet employability criteria. The disparities are equally concerning on a state level.
While Maharashtra boasts 84% employability, there are other states like Gujarat and Tamil Nadu which hover around 62-64% reflecting the uneven impact of skill-building efforts across the nation. Even states like Kerala and Uttar Pradesh which have diverse educational reality have a moderate employability rate of around 70%, which shows significant variations in skill quality.
Source: India Skills Report 2025.
Misplaced solution to a structural social opportunity crisis?
Looking at similar experiments in countries like the UAE where institutions like NYU Abu Dhabi and Yale-NUS were introduced, a simple question arises: Did the creation of new foreign institutional campuses make education more accessible or affordable for native students in these countries or did these students merely serve as consumers in an expansionist strategy of such universities for revenue/profit motives? The answer to that question is crucial in understanding why India must rethink its priorities before embracing this model.
The closure of Yale-NUS campuses in Singapore and UNSW’s Singapore campus further highlights the difficulties foreign universities face when establishing branches abroad. Low gross enrolment, financial sustainability concerns, and the limited appeal of earning a foreign university degree outside its home country have all contributed to their lack of appeal.
Even globally renowned institutions such as Johns Hopkins in Malaysia and George Mason University in Ras Al Khaimah collapsed due to financial disputes and low enrolment. The University of Waterloo’s Dubai campus similarly shut down for these very reasons.
Those that have managed to persist, such as NYU Abu Dhabi and Texas A&M Qatar, have not been free from controversy or their own issues. These institutions frequently face criticism for restricting academic freedom, and exploiting workers, or working against the values they embody in their core principled vision (as observed in their home campuses). If universities backed by massive endowments have struggled to sustain themselves in other countries, what guarantees their success in India, where regulatory, organisational and operational challenges are even more complex?
In a highly privatised education market across India, it is already valued at $117 billion which is further expected to grow to $225 billion. This rapid expansion of private education is now making up around 30% of global higher education enrolment according to UNESCO statistics which signals another clear trend of education increasingly treated as a commodity – which provides foreign universities a case to invest in India.
Source: AISHE Report.
Deeper, structural problems of efficiency and equity in improving content and quality of Indian higher education is a complex subject of discussion and requires long-term policy planning. The Indian government has failed to engage sufficiently on these issues and has had an indifferent approach to reforming the higher education landscape at a time when youth unemployment has peaked over the last decade. The pursuit of academic excellence, built on inculcating constitutionally-recognised principles of democratic accountability, public reasoning, and impartial critical scrutiny, requires an urgent dialogue. Short term, quick fix measures like rolling the red-carpet for foreign universities merely furthers a process of commodification in educational access for a country that is divided by issues of informality, inequality, and lack of affordability of quality higher education.
Deepanshu Mohan is a Professor of Economics, Dean, IDEAS, and Director, Centre for New Economics Studies. He is a Visiting Professor at London School of Economics and an Academic Visiting Fellow to AMES, University of Oxford.
Ankur Singh from Centre for New Economics Studies (CNES) contributed to this article.
