New Delhi: The first international university to open its full-fledged campus in India, Australia’s Deakin University, is all set to begin application processes for its inaugural batch of students by the end of this year, ThePrint has learnt. Deakin’s India campus will come up in Gujarat’s GIFT City (Gujarat International Finance Tec-City) and the first batch will begin “no later than July 2024”, the university said.
Deakin is opening its India campus under a central government scheme inviting international universities to operate from India, as suggested under the new National Education Policy. The University Grants Commission (UGC) had in January this year released draft guidelines for foreign universities who wish to open their campuses in India under the scheme and invited applications from interested universities. Deakin was one of the first universities to be selected.
Detailing its plans for the Indian campus, the university’s vice-president (Global Alliances) and CEO (South Asia) Ravneet Pahwa told ThePrint in an email, “The university plans to start with a student strength of 50-60 students per course and gradually raise that to nearly 100. While the tuition fee is yet to be finalised, it is estimated to be half of what Deakin charges on its campuses in Australia.”
The fees for courses in the Australian campuses range from 30,000 Australian dollars (AUD) to AUD 40,000, depending upon the course. This roughly translates to Rs.16 lakh to above Rs.21 lakh in Indian currency.
According to Pahwa, to begin with, the university will offer two postgraduate courses at its India campus, Masters in Cybersecurity (professional) and Business Analytics. She added that both these courses are in demand and address emergent work areas in the industry scope of India.
“With these courses, students access the knowledge and skills for creating a cohort of trained workforce for the fin-tech [finance-technology] sector at GIFT City and India at large,” she added.
The university will also give its students the option to study abroad for a semester and internships with partner industries.
According to Pahwa, Deakin plans to start its faculty hiring for the India campus soon, with a mix of Indian teachers and those from the university’s Australia campus.
Also read: Earn while you learn, bridge courses — UGC’s new proposals to help disadvantaged students
‘Cadetships USP of courses offered by Deakin’
Talking about the faculty at the India campus, Pahwa said, “about 80 per cent of them will be engaged in India while about 20 per cent will be staff who will come from Australia. The engaged faculty from India will be supported to come to Australia once every 12-18 months so that they have a chance to learn from what is happening in Australia, but also for the Australian colleagues to learn from what is happening in GIFT City”.
She also said that the Indian teaching faculty employed at the Deakin University campus in GIFT City will be expected to complete a graduate certificate on teaching and learning methods in higher education, within the first three years of their employment.
Sharing details of the GIFT City campus, Pahwa said it will be spread over 25,000 square feet, and will be set up with an investment of AUD 4 million.
“The USP of the courses offered by Deakin will be ‘cadetships’ — research projects and internships which will be available through its partnership with industries. So yes, students will get opportunities for interning and gathering first-hand working knowledge and skill development,” said Pahwa.
She added: “The campus is also designed to support GIFT City by delivering job-ready graduates for its business segments. In addition to classroom learning, students will have the unique opportunity to gain tangible, real-life work experience for enhanced cadetship. They can also study a part of their course with Deakin partners or in Australia, providing an international perspective and broadening their horizons in the digital economy.”
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
Also read: UGC directs institutes to empanel in-house ‘kala gurus’ to counter ‘mechanical way’ of teaching