Australia’s Deakin University will become the first university in the world to open an international teaching campus in India. The announcement was made in Ahmedabad on Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s first day in India.
The state-of-the-art campus will be set up the heart of the smart business district GIFT City (Gujarat International Finance Tec-City) that will give students access to future-ready Deakin post-graduate courses.
Deakin Vice-Chancellor Professor Iain Martin said “Deakin was the first international university to establish its presence in India in 1994, and since then, through innovative collaborations across research, education and training, we have forged a bond.”
Professor Martin said Deakin’s approach was ‘in India, with India, for India’ and that as the university prepared to celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2024, opening a new India campus marked an exciting new chapter.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Deakin’s Chancellor Mr John Stanhope AM, and many distinguished guests in Ahmedabad formally announced this exciting initiative.
📰 | #Deakin will become the first university in the world to open an international teaching campus in India.
The campus in the heart of the smart business district GIFT City will give students access to future-ready postgraduate courses.
🔗 https://t.co/nPpqaV8ZZO pic.twitter.com/FJrlmoGPTy
— Deakin University (@Deakin) March 8, 2023
Speaking at the event, Mr. Albanese said, “Of course, we always welcome students to come and study in Australia, but not everyone has the means or the ability to pack up their lives and study in another country. So the presence of Australian universities in India opens up new ways for Indian students to obtain an Australian education by bringing Australia a little bit closer.”
Deakin Vice-President (Global Alliances) and CEO (South Asia) Ms Ravneet Pawha said it was a “momentous occasion for Australia and India”.
The academic standards will be based on Deakin’s standards frameworks and manuals aligned with Australia’s national accreditation body, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA).
Concentrating on the needs of the digital economy, Deakin’s world-class course offerings on campus will initially include the Master of Cyber Security and Master of Business Analytics, before expanding to degrees from the faculties of Science, Engineering & Built Environment, and Business & Law.
Prof Iain Martin said later, “We will be delivering degrees that are identical to the degrees that we deliver in Australia. One of the things we hope to do, is not only make them identical, but deliver them at the same time in the calendar so that students can interact with their equivalent students in Australia.”
Deakin University’s Indian links go back a very long way. To the 1890s, in fact. In 1893, that former Australian Prime Minister and leader of the Australian Federation Movement, Alfred Deakin, after whom the university is named, predicted that students from Australia and India would traverse international borders and form lasting intellectual partnerships. (His long-standing interest in irrigation and cultural diversity first took him to India. He published a research report, Irrigated India (1893), while his explorations of the spiritual centres and architecture of India were published in Temple and Tomb in India.)
Read More: Albanese arrives in India to a traditional Gujarati welcome