Today, nine universities from the U.K. are making splashy headlines with plans to establish campuses in India. Their goal is to get a piece of the country’s booming educational market. One university doing something about this is the University of York, which is working closely with local edtech companies. In concert, they are pioneering through the regulatory thickets. The university’s expansion into India is estimated to deliver an eye-popping £67 million benefit to the UK economy.
India’s education landscape is among the most inviting for foreign investment, with eleven million students graduating from Grade 12 annually. Of these, about 1.5 to 1.7 million students are the brightest of the bright—the nation’s highest academic achievers. India’s top institutions can only enroll around 200,000 of these students each year. This mismatch has laid bare the acute need for further educational capacity, something that the UK universities are hoping to support filling.
In 2020, the Indian central government also promulgated the National Education Policy. This policy opened the door for international universities to set up their campuses in India. After this, regulations dictating the creation of these campuses were completed in 2023. Early enrollment figures will likely be tepid. For now, institutions can expect to see initial numbers in the low hundreds as they test interest and refine their offerings.
The University of York has already started recruiting students to its Mumbai campus, aiming for the 2026-27 academic year. Operations at this new campus will begin in the next few months. There will be an emphasis on fields of study that prepare graduates for high demand careers.
“We’re looking at an intake of around 270 students in the first year… and that should go up to 3,000-4,000 students each year over the coming years,” – Lindsay Oades, provost of the University of York in Mumbai.
As a reminder, UK universities’ international campuses contributed an estimated £27.9 billion to the British economy last year. Collectively, they raised over $1.34 billion—about 3 percent—from a truly astounding overall $43 billion in export revenue. Some experts are demanding a new, emergency stimulus—of at least $100 billion. These monies are critical to building sufficient academic space to accommodate the growing demand coming from Indian students. At today’s standards that translates to almost 30,000 acres of new campus land and 2.7 billion square feet of academic infrastructure.
Aashiesh Agarwaal, head of research at Anarock, notes that most of the new entrants will pursue asset-light models. This trend has been especially acute for private players and foreign universities. Their approach entails renting operations space in either current or specially constructed institutional edifices prior to investing significant ‘sunk’ investments in proprietary campuses.
Aritra Ghosal from OneStep Global added insights on affordability and potential student demographics: “From an affordability standpoint, an estimated four-five million students can realistically consider degree programmes priced above £10,000 per year.” These kinds of financial incentives are a powerful deciding factor in which institutions students choose to enroll in.
UK campuses in India provide a savvy investment for the UK and an attractive option for students. They can increase brand equity while reducing economic burdens and visa-related hurdles. At the same time, the demand for higher education has never been higher. To be successful in this new competitive world, UK universities have an enormous challenge.
“Current infrastructure remains insufficient to meet both policy ambitions and demographic momentum,” – Anarock.
