Australian varsity’s fee for students in India to be half of its parent campus

The Indian Express had first reported that Deakin and UoW were among the two Australian universities planning to set up offshore campuses in India.

University of Wollongong from Austral will soon open a campus in India

Professor Davidson told The Indian Express that UoW plans to start operations in September by launching short courses. Enrolments to full-time degree courses will, however, begin in 2024, he added. (Representational/File)

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The tuition fee at the proposed India campus of University of Wollongong (UoW) will be half of what its parent campus in Australia charges, the varsity said on Friday after obtaining formal approval to launch its operations at Gujarat’s GIFT city.

The announcement was made after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with University of Wollongong Vice Chancellor Professor Patricia M Davidson in Gandhinagar in the presence of International Financial Services Centre Authority (IFSCA) officials.

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The Indian Express had first reported that Deakin and UoW were among the two Australian universities planning to set up offshore campuses in India.

Professor Davidson told The Indian Express that UoW plans to start operations in September by launching short courses. Enrolments to full-time degree courses will, however, begin in 2024, he added.

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“The university will set the student fee at 50 per cent of those incurred by international students at UoW’s Australian campus. This will be supplemented by about five merit scholarships to support students,” according to the statement issued by the UoW.

For instance, the fee for the Master of Applied Finance course for international students in Australian Dollars (AUD) at UOW is 48,096, according to its prospectus. However, only half of that amount, or AUD 24,048, will have to be paid by a student for pursuing the course in India.

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Among the short courses that the UoW plans to launch this year are a Graduate Certificate in Computing and a Master of Computing in the Finance domain, while a Masters in Applied Finance and Financial Technology (FinTech) will be launched in 2024. This will be followed by Bachelors of Business and Computing Science in 2025.

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Moreover, during the 2024-24 academic session, UoW may admit 50 students. Over the next five years, it plans to scale up and admit 4,000 students, said Davidson.

“We did benchmarking across a range of international campuses and also considering the cost structure, we made sure that we provide a degree that is comparable to the quality of Australia,” she added.

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In addition, UoW also plans to establish a Global Capital Markets Research Centre in its GIFT City location focussed on training PhD students and delivery of research with a focus on Indian capital markets.

UoW has commenced work with the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) and have in-principle support from the Bombay Stock Exchange and Singapore Exchange (SGX).