When Queen’s University Belfast announced in January that it was planning to open an overseas campus in India, there was an immediate backlash from staff.

That was because the announcement coincided with another one – the launch of a voluntary severance scheme, in the wake of the institution’s £12.7 million operating deficit.

“It is scandalous that QUB is putting massive amounts of money into a new campus halfway round the world all the while axeing jobs in Belfast,” Jo Grady, general secretary of the University and College Union, in response to the news.

But QUB is far from the only institution in the UK’s struggling higher education sector to have set its sights on an Indian outpost. Recent months have seen a wave of similar announcements and expressions of interest from the likes of the University of Southampton, the University of Surrey, Newcastle University and the University of Leicester.

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In total, according to Avantika Tomar, partner at EY-Parthenon India, there are around six to eight foreign institutions close to finalising discussions with Indian regulators, the majority of them British.

And many UK institutions are also looking beyond India. For example, Cardiff University – which recently announced 400 academic job cuts – is in discussions to open a branch campus in Kazakhstan, another burgeoning hub for international campuses. The University of Exeter recently announced plans to open a campus in Egypt, while Southampton hopes to open at least two more overseas campuses by the end of the current decade.

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On the surface, it may seem illogical to be investing so heavily abroad when the UK’s domestic higher education sector faces a financial crisis at home, with more than 10,000 staff losing their jobs last year. However, for some universities, foreign campuses appear to be a last-ditch attempt to save their home operations.

Some institutions that previously ruled out establishing branch campuses have “suddenly…changed their view, purely because they need another income stream”, said Richard Wells, deputy vice-chancellor for international at Coventry University, which already has branch or “branded” overseas campuses in , , and and was among the first UK universities to publicly express an interest in setting up an Indian campus after the country altered regulation to make it possible following the publication of the 2020 National Education Policy.

However, in recent years, branch campuses have come under scrutiny for the perceived lack of returns they bring amid some high-profile disasters. A notable example is Reading University’s Malaysia campus, which, in 2018, faced a £20 million deficit. Five years later, the university’s financial statements showed the campus had finally begun to break even, following a significant restructure, but it is yet to turn a profit.

Others have abandoned branch campuses altogether: the University of Aberdeen gave up on plans to open a Korean outpost in 2019 following financial and logistical pressures, while, in the same year, UCL announced plans to shut its campus in Qatar, having its outposts in Australia and Kazakhstan.

Around that time, concerns about the financial risk associated with branch campuses generated speculation that the model may be dying out altogether, but the widespread interest in India suggests they may be making a comeback.

“There is a sudden rush of universities, which I find quite amusing because a lot of them are the ones who, five years ago, looked down their noses at anybody who did [TNE],” said Wells.

A rush to India? The international universities considering campuses

While the likes of China, Malaysia, Dubai and Qatar are already home to multiple foreign institutions, India is not the only country to have opened up only recently. Indonesia is another example, where Australia’s Monash University was the first foreign university to establish a presence, opening in Jakarta in 2021. And many of South-east Asia’s emerging economies appear to be taking tentative steps towards inviting in foreign ventures, including Vietnam, Thailand and the , which have all signalled that policy changes to that effect may be on the horizon.

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Given these countries’ sizeable youth populations, growing middle classes and limited higher education capacity, they are all bound to appeal to Western institutions. But it is unlikely that any will generate as much interest as India.

Not only is India now the world’s most populous country, it is one of the largest senders of international students abroad. What’s more, compared with places like China and Malaysia, its internal market is “untapped”, said Vishwajeet Rana, group chief executive officer at Gedu, an education company that is partnering with Coventry on its proposed Indian campus.

EY-Parthenon’s Tomar agrees: “International universities are showing a clear intent to engage early before competition intensifies,” she said.

So can universities actually make money through branch campuses, particularly in India? Or do their overseas ambitions risk worsening their already dire financial prospects?

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One relative financial success story is the University of Nottingham, whose , opened in 2004, generated in 2023-24, with no subsidies from the UK required. And while its , opened in 2000, was less profitable, it still brought in £1.8 million, with £355,000 spent by its UK parent.

And Coventry’s Wells is convinced that there is money to be made from branch campuses when they are done right. “I can safely say that all the campus operations I’ve been involved in in my career have all been profitable,” he said. The key, he believes, is to find the right operating model.

For universities entering India, there are a number of options on the table. A clear dividing line appears to be whether they are opening campuses in partnership with private providers or going it alone.

Queen’s is one of the few universities that is proposing to self-finance its India campus. A representative from the university that it was expecting to invest £5-7 million, while university officials confirmed to THE that no other partners were involved.

For most cash-strapped UK universities, however, the money looks to be coming from other sources – primarily, private companies. Southampton is working with Oxford International Education Group to open a campus on the outskirts of Delhi, for instance, while Surrey plans to work with GUS Global Services.

That model “makes sense for a number of reasons”, said Vincenzo Raimo, an international higher education consultant and former pro vice-chancellor of global engagement at Reading. One of those reasons is the help that partners with local knowledge can offer when it comes to navigating complex regulatory requirements and recruiting students and staff. Arguably more crucial, though, is the cash these partners can also put in.��

“Particularly at a time when resources here are limited in the UK, the idea of investing a huge amount or even a small amount on upfront costs in another country will be challenging for those institutions,” Raimo said.

Moreover, if the campus fails, the effect on the parent institution is likely to be less adverse if the financial risk is shared. Universities don’t typically disclose the details of their commercial agreements with private partners, but Gedu’s Rana confirmed that “there is a way [to establish a branch campus] whereby universities can leave more risk to the private infrastructure provider, and they don’t pick up any kind of losses”.

According to Rana, universities that partner with private providers and offer the right courses could start seeing returns from year one: “The potential is immense.” On the other hand, he said, “if you are making a heavy investment from your own balance sheet, I think it will take certainly longer to have the return”.

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Amit Dave/Reuters

Yet however tempting the financial arrangements might appear, partnerships come with their own risks.

“You have less control,” Raimo said, including over the student experience. And while they might provide the cash, private companies will also be taking a cut of the profits. In the case of branch campuses, universities are also normally committed to “teach-out” clauses, which mean that if they decide to exit, they must remain until all enrolled students have graduated.

Another key factor impacting profitability is location. The majority of the Indian campuses so far announced will be in Gift City, a special economic zone in Gujarat where Deakin and Wollongong have already opened campuses. There, foreign universities are not subject to the tax rules that govern the rest of India, meaning they can repatriate all their profits tax-free – for 10 out of the first 15 years, at least (it remains unclear what will happen after this period).

The downside to Gift City is the student population – or lack thereof. The city is a new one and its construction is still very much a work in progress. There is a question mark over whether it has enough to offer students from outside its immediate region. Indeed, that is an issue for the whole state of Gujarat, in India’s far north-west, which has “traditionally attracted students from within the state and neighbouring regions”, according to EY-Parthenon’s Tomar.

Jana Kleibert, a professor of economic geography at the University of Hamburg, is��sceptical about the appeal of the city: “We've seen a number of countries developing education cities far from developed urban areas, which have struggled to attract students due to lacking infrastructure." If students first have to move far from home to get an education at Gift City "the question for institutions is really to look beyond aggregated figures of demand and identify who their potential students are and whether this is an attractive offering for them to relocate for."

Institutions establishing campuses in Gift City are also limited to offering postgraduate courses linked to finance, management and STEM subjects, in line with the skills required by what is envisioned as a future international financial hub. Students at Wollongong’s campus, which opened in November, can select from five courses, all related to financial technology (fintech) and computing. At Deakin’s campus, they can choose between master’s courses in business analytics and cybersecurity.

It seems likely that the UK institutions entering Gift City will likewise offer a limited selection of low-cost courses to a handful of students, and doing so limits the upfront investment required from either partner.

“It makes sense for institutions to offer courses that are easy to roll out, scale and receive a return on,” said Kleibert. “They don't need laboratories, they don't need any kind of infrastructure. If you think of business studies, the textbooks are in English – you can just roll it out.” She continued, “No institution that wants to make fast income would say, ‘I will set up a pharmaceutical or medicine programme abroad’.”

The peril, however, is that “if multiple [branch campuses] co-locate in the same place with not very differentiated product offerings – let’s say, all mid-tier UK universities offering business degrees – there has to be huge demand” to keep them all afloat, Kleibert warns.

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Wollongong’s Gift City campus is fully self-funded, with course fees varying from A$9,300 (£4,688) for a six-month graduate certificate in computing to A$37,200 (£18,753) for a two-year extended master’s in financial technology. The campus hoped to enrol 500 students in its first year; when asked if it had met this target, a spokesperson declined to share current student numbers but said enrolments have “shown promising growth signs”.

In Australia, Wollongong has recently announced a savings plan following a A$35 million drop in revenue in 2024, which it blames on government restrictions on international student visas. But the university insists that it is in no hurry for its India campus to ride to the rescue.

“While financial sustainability remains a key focus, the immediate priority is academic excellence, strong industry connections, and student success,” a Wollongong spokesperson said of the institution’s India outpost. “As the campus continues to grow, student enrolments and financial outcomes are expected to follow a positive trajectory.”

Achieving critical mass will certainly be crucial for those universities who value their branch campuses primarily in financial terms, as it is “quite hard to make money out of a small-scale operation”, according to Coventry’s Wells.

“It is true that sometimes you have to start small,” he conceded, however. “My view is, on things like Gift City, yes, you might be starting with two or three programmes…For me, if I start with two or three programmes, I would need at least 10 in five years. Otherwise, you’ve got to question why you’re there.”

Coventry’s four existing overseas campuses contribute to one of the biggest TNE operations among UK universities, which enrolled a total of about 21,000 students in the 2022-23 academic year. In the previous academic year, TNE (in all forms, not just branch campuses) earned it – 2.6 per cent of its in 2021-22.

Southampton is one of the institutions with a clear plan to scale up in India. Set to open its campus later this year, Southampton plans to admit 150 students initially and hopes to grow this figure to 5,000 by the end of its first decade.

Only one other university – Western Sydney – has so far announced plans��to open Indian campuses outside Gift City, but market entry specialists say more universities are considering doing so. “We see increasing interest in branch campuses in tier-one cities, which are already hubs for migration, industries and wealth,” said Richard McCallum, chief executive officer of the UK India Business Council. “Establishing outside Gift City allows a university to offer a broader set of programmes; this is important because UK universities need to really focus on subject-area strengths.”

But while setting up outside Gift City gives institutions access to a wider base of prospective students and freedom to offer more courses, it does mean they will be subject to India’s foreign remittance laws, which could significantly cut into their profits. To counter this, certain states have introduced regional incentives to attract providers. For example, the Uttar Pradesh government has promised the first five foreign institutions to establish a campus there – of which Western Sydney looks like being the first – a complete exemption from stamp duty and a 20 per cent capital subsidy.

Variation in branch campus locations is essential, according to McCallum, to avoid a situation like that in Malaysia or Dubai, where campuses are clustered together and struggle to stand out. “Expanding into tier-two cities or partnering with industries in their regional hubs is an area of real opportunity,” McCallum said.

The other key potential income stream offered by branch campuses is the articulation of students to the home campuses for parts of their degrees. At Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in China, for example, students can spend two years in China and then two in Liverpool. For the latter two years, the students pay international fees (albeit with a��10 per cent discount) to the home campus – over double what they pay in China. Liverpool credits that arrangement for the 2 per cent growth in overseas student numbers it saw in 2024 despite a tricky recruitment landscape for UK universities.

According to Kleibert’s research, the profits made from these transfer students is sometimes enough to convince universities to continue with loss-making operations abroad. And Raimo’s hunch is that the “key to financial success” of the UK’s new India campuses will likewise be “the articulation of students from India to the UK”.

That success, of course, is by no means guaranteed. But overseas universities are likely to be tempted by India’s vast internal student market – which, by common agreement, is currently underserved in terms of good-quality higher-education options.

“As long as the early adopters are successful,” said McCallum, “I think we are going to see a large number of universities consider opening in India.”

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The supposedly moribund branch campus movement, it seems, may be about to sprout again.