In a bold step for Indian higher education, the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIM Bangalore) is going to open its first international campus in Indonesia.
It is an important step for India’s expansion to international education and for India’s engagement with Southeast Asia under Modi’s Act East policy.
The proposed campus will become IIM Bangalore’s first overseas academic centre, and will be a center for management education, executive training, research collaboration and student exchange programmes.
The expansion is indicative of India’s increasing interest in placing its top educational centres at the forefront of the world stage.
The announcement comes at the time India and Indonesia are growing in collaboration in various domains including trade, technology, education, defence and digital innovation.
Education has become one of the core areas of bilateral cooperation as both countries are aware of the need for highly skilled people to help drive the Indo-Pacific region’s economic growth.
Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest economy, provides an ideal site for IIM Bangalore’s international expansion. With the high-density young population, it is a country where the need to learn business education and entrepreneurship in greater numbers is more acute and growing.
Establishing a campus there will give students from ASEAN countries access to one of India’s world-class management institutions without the need to move to India.
The international campus is expected to offer postgraduate management courses, executive education courses, leadership development initiatives and industry-focused research.
It will also encourage collaborations with Indonesian universities, government agencies and businesses to do faculty exchanges, joint research projects and innovation alliances.
The move will greatly benefit India’s educational diplomacy, experts say.
As countries increasingly use higher education as a tool for international engagement, the presence of an IIM campus abroad strengthens India’s soft power and shows off the global reputation of Indian institutions.
The initiative is in line with India's National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and the rationale for many top universities to establish campuses abroad and international academic cooperation.
The policy would make India a global knowledge center, drawing in international students and expanding Indian educational excellence.
For Indonesia, the partnership will provide management education that is globally recognised to meet the needs of the business in Asia.
The students will meet Indian concepts of business, entrepreneurship ecosystems, digital transformation strategies and leadership models that have been recognized internationally.
The development will further cement India-ASEAN relations with greater people-to-people ties, academic mobility and cross-border innovation and will help to accelerate the country’s engagement with ASEAN.
It also contributes to a wider agenda of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to improve ASEAN engagement through economic cooperation, connectivity and strategic partnership.
When IIM Bangalore is going to open its first international campus, it is not just a campus, but an international expansion.
It is a sign of India’s growing confidence in itself as a global education provider and how higher education is a crucial element in shaping relations of diplomatic, economic and cultural importance in the Indo-Pacific.
The Indonesia campus stands to be the template for other top international institutions to be established in the future if we can partner with Indonesia, and the other top Indian universities become global.
