Indian branch campuses twice as costly as local universities

The cost of studying at an international branch campus in India is twice as expensive as attending an elite local university but only a third of the cost of studying abroad, according to a researcher who analysed the tuition fees of all the new sites launched in recent years. 

Across the 14 international campuses now operating in India, Rahul Choudaha, the director of DrEducation Research, found the average annual undergraduate tuition fee is £10,140. This falls in-between the cost of studying at a Tier 1 private university in India (£4,680) and studying abroad at the home campus of one of the institutions now operating in India (£28,080).

A total of 13 universities have a presence across India through 14 campuses. There are seven UK campuses and 50 programmes, and six Australian campuses (the University of Western Australia is based in two locations) and 33 programmes.

The gap between the cost of private higher education and studying abroad has always been steep, and Choudaha told Times Higher Education that the international campus has stepped in “somewhere in the middle”.

But his report found that the annual tuition fees of UK and Australian university campuses in India vary significantly.

At £13,884, Australian campuses cost 16 per cent more than the £9,516 fee at UK campuses for undergraduates.

However, the opposite is true at postgraduate level. In Australian campuses, postgraduate studies cost £13,182 and in UK campuses, they cost £13,884.

The report revealed greater variance in UK tuition fees at an undergraduate and postgraduate level compared with Australia – for example, UK undergraduate costs swing from £5,850 to £11,700.

The estimated annual intake across all 13 universities for 2026-27 is 2,730 students. However, Choudaha estimated that “actual enrolment in these universities” will be half of this figure, “not more than 1,500 students”.

His reasoning is that these branch campuses are a “very new” phenomenon. “There is a wait and watch approach,” he explained. “It’s a high-stakes decision for family and students.

“The Indian characteristic is even more risk averse and highly career outcomes driven, so they want to see what the return on investment is. ‘How does it reward me in terms of jobs at the end of it?’”

The 13 universities operate across five locations in India: Mumbai has five campuses, Bengaluru has three campuses, GIFT City (Gujarat International Finance Tec-City) has three campuses, Delhi NCR (National Capital Region) has two campuses and Chennai has one campus.

Remarking on the geographical disparity of branch campuses, Choudaha said that international universities are “coming in to make quick wins and get an early start where the appetite for global learning already exists and the willingness to pay for that also exists”. The risk, however, is that Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi NCR are becoming “saturated”.

Choudaha identified potential in other megacities like Pune in the west of India and Hyderabad in south India as places of “huge untapped potential”.

There is not a single campus in Hyderabad, capital of southern India’s Telangana state, despite the fact it is a major centre for the technology industry and “one of the biggest sources of international students overseas”, said Choudaha.

rosalind.skillen@timeshighereducation.com