IITs set to open campuses in UK: Report

Lord Bilimoria, chancellor of the University of Birmingham, shows interest, says his institution is open to partnership. 

As per a report published in Times Higher Education, India’s high commissioner to the United Kingdom (UK), Gaitri Kumar, said she was “pleased” with the responses she received when she shared the desire of IITs to open branches in the UK and added that she would be working on developing plans immediately.  

Academics and policymakers with knowledge of the issue said discussions were starting to take place but were at an initial stage. Nevertheless, at least one UK university has expressed an interest in hosting an IIT outpost. Lord Bilimoria, chancellor of the University of Birmingham, said his institution would be “very open” to such a partnership. 

IITs have world’s brightest students: University of Birmingham chancellor 

“India is literally churning out world leaders – and the IITs have some of brightest students anywhere in world,” Bilimoria said. Cautioning that plans for IITs to come to the UK were still “up in the air”, Bilimoria said one model would be for a “physical presence” in Birmingham jointly staffed by local and IIT researchers. 

Bilimoria stressed that Indian students should be able to come to the UK to learn at any joint venture, with British students able to go the other direction. “It should be both ways…so it becomes a real partnership,” he said. 

Rittika Chanda Parruck, director of education for India at the British Council, said current exchanges between the UK and India – such as the British Council’s Going Global partnerships grant, which helps institutions in both countries co-create joint programmes of study – could be a starting point for future branch campuses. 

Such exchanges would be a “natural first step towards more intense engagement, such as setting up campuses or more elaborate partnership arrangements”, she said. “It’s a complex area, so you start from the simplest unit before you move on,” she said. 

Though Birmingham is the first institution to express an interest, Lord Johnson said he was confident that others would soon be “making a beeline to the Indian High Commission to see if they can explore it”. He said a “more balanced relationship” in higher education between the UK and India was “long overdue”, with India’s overall inward to outward student mobility ratio at 1:10 globally, but more than 1:300 for the UK.  

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