Foreign universities have opened in India, and the first intakes are tiny

For years, “foreign universities in India” was a policy promise that never quite arrived. The idea appeared in draft after draft, always a few regulations away from reality. In 2023 the University Grants Commission finally published the rules, and in 2024 the first campuses opened. The way they opened, quietly, in a financial zone, with a handful of students, says as much as the fact that they did.

UGC’s framework is deliberately selective. Only universities ranked in the global top 500, overall or by subject, may apply, and they need UGC approval to set up. In return they get freedoms Indian institutions do not have.

What do the 2023 regulations allow?

The UGC regulations, notified on 8 November 2023, let a qualifying foreign university run an independent campus rather than a partnership with an Indian institution. The campus can offer everything from certificates to doctoral and post-doctoral programmes, decide its own admission process and fee structure, and send money back to its parent.

Foreign Higher Educational Institution (FHEI) campus

An FHEI campus is an independent India branch of a foreign university, permitted under UGC’s 2023 regulations for universities in the global top 500. It sets its own admissions, fees and courses, awards degrees equivalent to its home campus, and can repatriate funds, a level of autonomy Indian universities do not hold.

The equivalence provision is the quiet incentive. A degree from the India campus counts as equal to the same degree at the main campus and to an Indian degree, with no separate recognition process. For a student, that removes the usual friction of a foreign qualification.

Why did the first campuses open in GIFT City?

The two pioneers, Deakin University and the University of Wollongong , did not open under the UGC route at all. They set up in Gujarat’s GIFT City , which runs under the IFSCA framework for the financial zone rather than UGC’s rules, using the zone’s special economic status and regulatory flexibility.

That choice is telling. GIFT City offered a faster, lower-friction entry than the general UGC pathway, and the first movers took it. It means the headline achievement, foreign campuses in India, and the headline policy, UGC’s 2023 regulations, are not yet the same thing.

How large is the start, really?

Small. Deakin’s GIFT City campus opened in July 2024 with about 43 students in its first year, focused on postgraduate technology and business courses. The University of Wollongong followed in November 2024 with roughly 9 students in its first intake, in fintech, computing and data analytics.

These are pilot-scale numbers, and they should be read as such. The significance is not the size of the first cohorts but that the pathway now exists and has been walked. Whether it widens depends on demand, on how the fee levels land with Indian families, and on whether universities choose the UGC route rather than the GIFT City workaround.

Conclusion

India has moved foreign campuses from perpetual proposal to operating reality, and that is a genuine shift. But the first intakes are tiny and the pioneers came through a financial-zone side door, not the main UGC gate. The framework’s real test is still ahead: whether top-ranked universities open UGC-route campuses at scale, and whether Indian students enrol in numbers that make the experiment more than a symbol.