Sri Lanka campus is latest in IIT internationalisation drive

The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras), India’s top-ranked engineering institute, will open a branch campus in Sri Lanka this year with funding provided by the Sri Lanka government, as part of the ongoing internationalisation of IITs, including expansion of IITs abroad.

The proposal for the new campus was announced last November in the 2024 Budget unveiled by Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who also serves as finance minister. The campus will be set up in Kandy, a city renowned for its rich culture and history.

Sri Lanka’s Education Minister Dr Susil Premajayantha has revealed plans by his ministry to send a team of academics to IIT Madras prior to the arrival of the team from the IIT in Sri Lanka next month for discussions on setting up the campus.

Premajayantha said the IIT Madras team would present a report to Sri Lanka’s University Grants Commission outlining its courses and initiating the process of establishing the Kandy branch campus.

“The establishment of the university branch will help Sri Lankan students pursue their higher studies at an affordable price locally instead of travelling overseas,” he said, and added that IIT Madras degrees carried wide recognition, leading to employment.

The Indian government already extends scholarships and fellowships to students from Sri Lanka, enabling them to pursue undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in a diverse range of subjects at IITs within India. Scholarships are also available for research work and non-formal courses, for example, training courses in classical music and dance, according to the High Commission of India in Sri Lanka.

Nearly 270 slots are offered each year to Sri Lankan students for higher studies in India. The government of India has reserved up to 40 seats for Sri Lankan students, of which four to five are for medicine, at some of the most reputed public institutions.

Part of broader expansion

Earlier, IIT Madras became the first IIT in the country to launch an international campus, in Zanzibar, Tanzania, which opened in November last year.

Besides IIT Madras, IIT Delhi will set up a global campus in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates – IIT Delhi Abu Dhabi – with masters courses slated to commence this month at an interim campus at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi.

A two-year MTech in Energy Transition and Sustainability, specially geared to Abu Dhabi, is the first programme offered there. Around 25 seats are available, for which the IIT Delhi Abu Dhabi campus has received 200 applications, according to academics.

“To ensure the selection of the best candidates, applicants will undergo a rigorous process in line with IIT Delhi Abu Dhabi’s stringent standards,” IIT Delhi in Abu Dhabi said.

Mubarak Hamad Al Mheiri, undersecretary at Abu Dhabi Department of Education and Knowledge, said: “Leveraging the critical importance of environmental sustainability in the energy sector, this pioneering new programme is poised to play a pivotal role in shaping a sustainable future in the UAE and further afield.

“By nurturing a highly skilled human resource capable of effectively addressing an array of increasingly complex challenges associated with energy transition, we are committed to empowering individuals to drive positive change, spearheading a transformative journey towards a greener, more resilient world,” he said.

IIT Delhi Abu Dhabi will also offer courses in AI, mathematics, computer science and engineering, health care, and other disciplines in engineering, science and the humanities. It will start offering other bachelor, masters and PhD degree programmes from September 2024.

With the establishment of overseas campuses by IIT Delhi and IIT Madras, more IITs are expected to follow suit and further announcements in the year ahead are expected about IIT's setting up branch campuses.

Ashok Misra, former director of IIT Bombay, told University World News: “We are trying to take our knowledge and our expertise to different countries. This is like an outreach programme for the IITs. Every country has some percentage of students who are very bright, and by opening campuses in their country, the IITs can give them an opportunity to get the best education in their own country.”

Misra said that after studying in their own country, if students want to do a PhD they can come to India.

Foreign policy component

Education cooperation, along with the establishment of offshore campuses of Indian universities abroad and student mobility, has emerged as a key component of India’s foreign policy in recent years. The move also aligns with the National Education Policy 2020, which focuses on internationalisation and notes that “high performing Indian universities will be encouraged to set up campuses in other countries”.

India’s Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said last month that the IITs’ overseas campuses aim to extend the reach of Indian educational excellence beyond national boundaries. The move underlines internationalisation initiatives within the Indian education sector, he told the Rajya Sabha, India’s upper house of parliament.

According to Amit Agrawal, institute chair professor and former dean (international relations) at IIT Bombay, the IIT system has many strengths in terms of admission of students, governance structure and curricula, which ensure accessibility of high quality education to meritorious students.

Agrawal told University World News: “Lots of countries are naturally keen to learn from this experience. Having an IIT campus within their country would accelerate the development of faculty and engineering education, and help strengthen their research and innovation ecosystem as a whole.”

Academics say the setting up of the IIT campuses abroad will boost India’s reputation globally as well as its diplomatic relationships and expand the international footprint of IITs. It is also likely to enhance the quality of IIT education and research further, due to student and faculty diversity from the international campuses. It will further serve to deepen research collaborations with other top-ranked academic institutions worldwide, they argue.

International collaborations within India

The IITs have also proved to be a magnet, attracting collaboration from international universities within India, some of which are setting up or planning to set up branch campuses in India.

Australia’s Deakin University inaugurated its branch campus this month (10 January) in India’s GIFT City in the western state of Gujarat, becoming the first foreign university ever to open a campus in India. Deakin will offer a Master of Business Analytics and a Master of Cybersecurity (Professional) degree from July this year.

Ahead of the inauguration event, Deakin also announced a major initiative with IIT Madras to foster about 200 highly skilled graduate research scholars from member countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), which includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, as well as Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries.

The IIT Madras Deakin University Research Academy will undertake advanced research in key areas such as clean energy, climate change, critical technologies and healthcare technologies.

According to Deakin University, the research academy will give local students access to Deakin’s “future-ready” postgraduate courses in business analytics and cybersecurity at half the cost of Australian international fees.

The research academy features brand new digital classrooms, libraries and cybersecurity labs, all aimed at delivering an exceptional educational experience, while its digital integration with Deakin’s Australian campuses ensure students will have comprehensive access to essential learning resources.

Professor V Kamakoti, director of IIT Madras, said the research academy’s vision of amalgamating innovation, collaboration and responsible practices for a sustainable future positioned IIT Madras as a leader in sustainability teaching and research in the Global South.

An international admissions committee will be set up to screen the applicants, said Professor Satyanarayanan Seshadri, faculty-in-charge at IIT Madras Deakin University Research Academy, and a member of faculty in the department of applied mechanics and biomedical engineering at IIT Madras.

“It will be a rigorous process with guaranteed opportunities for students to participate in industry immersion … apart from [doing] fundamental blue skies research. The research will span a wide variety of topics identified and supported by the ‘Institute of Eminence’ initiatives at IIT Madras,” Seshadri told University World News, referring to the initiatives under India’s ‘World Class Programme’ which provides extra funding for top universities in India.

Students from SAARC and ASEAN will also be recruited to this programme, he said. IIT Madras will jointly supervise the students, support research activities, and enable student and faculty exchanges. Faculty from both universities will come together for admissions decisions and to supervise students.

High-value scholarships

Ravneet Pawha, vice-president (global alliances) and CEO (South Asia) at Deakin University, said all successful IIT Madras Deakin PhD applicants will be offered a full scholarship covering tuition and a stipend for living expenses for the duration of the four years of full-time study to allow them to focus on their research. The IIT Madras Deakin Research Academy will offer 30 scholarships.

The four-year joint PhD programme offers joint supervision by renowned faculty, access to the best research facilities, participation in an open innovation ecosystem, and partnership opportunities with industry leaders in India and Australia.

Pawha told University World News the government of India also launched an initiative in 2019 to fund 1,000 scholars from Southeast Asian countries to pursue PhDs at its 23 IITs. She said the move could help internationalise the country’s premier technology campuses and boost academic ties with Asian neighbours.

Academic and research collaboration with San Diego

Among the flurry of international tie-ups with IITs, IIT Gandhinagar and the University of San Diego (USD) this month signed an memorandum of understanding to collaborate on joint double masters programmes and dual degree programmes at undergraduate and masters levels including a Masters in Engineering Management and Leadership, which could include the option of doing half the programme in the United States and half in India.

Chell Roberts, dean of USD’s Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering, admitted in an interview with NDTV: “We are new to India. This is brand new, so we’re taking it a little bit slowly to make sure we do it right.” He said USD would like to “move in with branch campus activities”.

The collaboration with IIT Gandhinagar would include hybrid programmes and online courses currently offered at USD in the US. “Immersion programmes, hybrid programmes, certificate programmes, online options – our plan is to do the whole rainbow, if you will, of all of the colours of education, all at the highest quality,” he said.

USD will be offering online courses by San Diego professors in artificial intelligence, data science and cybersecurity from April, with the hybrid versions of the course offered later this year, including a programme to go the United States for part of the course.

“Not having done this in India before, we think it makes sense to take a first step and do it well, and not try to start really big, because big is not necessarily the goal,” he said. “Quality is the goal.”

“With hybrid, we’ll also be hiring some people here [in India] and training them in how we do things. So, it’ll be a mix of US professors and Indian professors that provide this. We’ve worked as fast as we can to align with the standards of India to make this work.”

University World News Asia Editor Yojana Sharma contributed to this article.