The Global Agora: Why Indian Universities Can No Longer Afford to Ignore Internationalization

Indian higher education stands at a moment of profound transformation. For decades, “international collaboration” meant little more than a ceremonial MoU, an annual foreign delegation photo-op, or a handful of students travelling abroad. That era has quietly ended. A new global order has emerged—one in which internationalization is not a decorative flourish but a strategic necessity for survival and growth. Today, it is as fundamental to a university’s identity as curriculum, faculty, or infrastructure.

What Internationalization Really Means for India

In India, internationalization is often misunderstood as Westernization, or as an obsession with global rankings. But its true meaning is far more grounded and far more ambitious: it is the deliberate effort to connect an Indian university with the world through its people, pedagogy, research, culture, and policies. This happens through four intersecting pathways.

The first is internationalization abroad—the familiar route of student and faculty mobility, semester-abroad programs, twinning and dual degrees, and the newer phenomenon of Indian institutions setting up overseas campuses, such as IIT Madras in Zanzibar and IIT Delhi in Abu Dhabi.

The second is internationalization at home, an often overlooked but crucial dimension in a country where 99% of students may never travel abroad. This is where global content enters classrooms, COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) reshapes assignments, and a multicultural campus culture exposes students to international peers, festivals, clubs, and visiting faculty.

The third is research and knowledge collaboration through joint centres like the IIT Bombay–Monash Research Academy, multi-country research consortia, co-authored publications, and South–South partnerships addressing shared challenges in health, climate, food security and low-cost innovation.

The fourth is enabling policy and institutional architecture, activated by the NEP 2020 reforms—Academic Bank of Credits, multiple exits, twinning and joint degrees, the Study in India program, and the regulatory sandbox at GIFT City. Together, these reforms position India not merely as a participant but as a future hub in the global higher education marketplace.

Why Global Exposure Is No Longer Optional

Three major shifts have made internationalization an imperative rather than an aspiration.

The first is the changing ambition of young Indians. Whether they come from metro cities or small towns, students now want global skills, exposure, mentors and networks—even if they never leave India. They expect courses aligned with international benchmarks and opportunities that prepare them for multicultural teams and multinational workplaces. If universities cannot offer this, students simply vote with their feet or their motivation.

The second shift stems from the nature of 21st-century challenges. Climate change, AI disruption, pandemics, supply chain fragilities and global migration are all transnational problems. A curriculum that is only inward-looking, however rigorous, is incomplete unless it equips students to navigate global systems and apply Indian knowledge to global questions—and vice versa.

The third shift is the sweeping policy overhaul under NEP 2020. Portable credits, joint degrees, global mobility options at a fraction of overseas costs, and greenfield opportunities at GIFT City have fundamentally altered the landscape. Institutions that act now can shape the new global higher education order; those that wait will be forced to follow.

The Institutional Journey: From Regional College to Global University

Internationalization is not a single office’s job—nor is it a one-time project. It evolves with the institution.

Early-stage regional universities should start small but strategic: selecting a few anchor partners, building blended learning capacity, investing in COIL pilots, embedding global case studies, and joining international networks. The shift must be from symbolic gestures to meaningful, living partnerships.

Mid-stage universities move the responsibility to middle leadership—HoDs, student affairs, hostels, HR, exam sections. Virtual exchanges expand, international student support systems take shape, and green, gender-sensitive campuses signal global readiness. A single-window international centre becomes the heart of the university’s global interface.

Mature universities extend this into deep research alliances, joint PhDs, global studios, dual degrees and even international branch campuses. Alumni networks, industry links and faculty exchanges create a sustained global ecosystem.

The Enabling Conditions: Infrastructure, People and Purpose

Meaningful global engagement requires enabling conditions, best captured in frameworks like the “10Square” model—integrating leadership, digital infrastructure, interdisciplinarity, sustainability, pedagogy, scholarships and assessment reform into one coherent system.

Several Indian institutions illustrate this:

• Symbiosis uses “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” as a lived campus philosophy, creating organic cultural spaces for international students.
  
  
• Manipal aligns leadership training, research networks and a strong Office of International Affairs to drive global engagement.
  
  
• O.P. Jindal Global University activates hundreds of MoUs into real mobility and curriculum partnerships and hires international faculty at scale.
  
  
• IITs like Madras and Delhi expand India’s academic footprint abroad through branch campuses, enabling South–South academic collaboration.
  
  
• Virtual partnerships like the COIL course between Ambedkar University Delhi and University of Washington Bothell show how digital platforms democratize global learning.
  
  

A Playbook for the Next Three Years

A practical roadmap for Indian universities includes:

1. Create a Global Relations & Scholarship Centre with a clear mandate and strategic role.
   
   
2. Develop a university “foreign policy”—a limited set of regions and anchor partners for deep, sustained collaboration.
   
   
3. Move from MoUs to MoUs-with-action—each with COIL modules, faculty exchanges, funded projects and yearly reviews.
   
   
4. Redesign 10–20% of all courses to include global and comparative content.
   
   
5. Scale COIL so every student has at least one cross-border virtual project.
   
   
6. Invest in “phygital” infrastructure with classrooms and platforms that support global teaching.
   
   
7. Build green, humane campuses that double as living labs for international research and student recruitment.
   
   
8. Strengthen support for international students through single-window centres, safe housing, buddy programs, pre-arrival orientations and anti-bias protocols.
   
   
9. Empower faculty with seed grants, exchange opportunities, conference funding and curriculum-development workshops.
   
   
10. Celebrate diversity through student-led festivals, clubs and cultural programs that build everyday intercultural competence.
    
    

The Real Rewards—and the Real Risks

Internationalization enriches students through global exposure, enhances faculty scholarship, boosts institutional reputation, and naturally improves metrics across NAAC, NIRF and global rankings like QS and THE.

But there is a trap: the rankings obsession. Chasing numbers—MoUs, foreign enrolments, international hires—without the necessary support system leads to student dissatisfaction, dropouts and reputational harm. True global engagement is measured not by the number of flags on a website, but by lived experiences, academic outcomes and community impact.

The Larger Promise: A Global Agora for the Global South

The real opportunity before Indian higher education is profound: to build universities that are globally connected but locally rooted, internationally engaged but socially committed. Universities that function as global agoras—spaces where Indian and international students meet as equals, co-create knowledge and build solutions for the Global South and the wider world.

If Indian universities combine visionary leadership, purposeful partnerships, humane campuses and smart technology, they can move from being consumers of global knowledge to producers and shapers of it.

That is the deeper promise of internationalization—and it is a moment India cannot afford to miss.