At last week’s World Audio Visual & Entertainment Summit (WAVES) in Mumbai, the University of Western Australia (UWA) announced it is opening a campus in Mumbai. FE’s Vikram Chaudhary talked to UWA’s chancellor Diane Smith-Gander on the next steps. Excerpts:
Why did you choose to open a campus in Mumbai, when other Australian universities such as Deakin and Wollongong went to the GIFT City?
The University of Western Australia (UWA) is in Perth, on the Indian Ocean, and we are very externally-oriented, and a large exporting state (because of our wealth of mineral resources). Over the years, we’ve developed strong ties with cities around the world, including Mumbai.
Also, we are the people of the ocean, and Mumbai feels like home.
Will it be a full-fledged campus?
Of course. Students will get exactly the same degree in Mumbai as from Perth, same academic standards, same kind of faculty, same governance.
Is it your first campus outside of Perth?
It will be our first campus outside Australia – we have one in Albany, to the southeast of Perth – and that makes it really exciting.
Which all courses will be offered?
We will look at skills required by Indian employers, and align our courses to those skills. The Indian government has been focusing on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), and so we will have STEM subjects, in addition to computer sciences and so forth. We will also focus on STEM graduates who need a business degree, MBA, or equivalent – so that they can unlock their technical skills for the benefit of the companies they work for. We have a lot of students like that in our postgraduate programmes at our business school in Perth.
What about faculty?
To begin with, some of our UWA faculty from Australia will come to Mumbai. But we will recruit faculty locally, and from other countries. Over time, the faculty profile at the Mumbai campus will be the same as on any global university – someone from Eastern Europe, South America, North America, and so on.
What’s the motivation for an Indian student to join an Australian university in India?
There are many kids who have the qualification to join a global university but may not have the economic ability to travel abroad. And so, we believe there is a market here.