On Saturday, the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) announced that it has set up a campus in Dubai, where classes will start in September.While this has made IIMA the first IIM to step outside India, it’s not the first Indian educational institution to go abroad. There is a long list – from Dubai to Africa, and even London and California:
Manipal Dubai (2000)
The Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Dubai Campus, was set up back in 2000, and it has evolved into a multicultural community with over 2,500 students from 45 countries right now. Manipal Dubai functions as the branch campus of the Manipal Academy of Higher Education, which is India’s largest private university.
BITS Pilani Dubai (2000)
Also established in 2000, BITS Pilani Dubai is the only international campus of BITS Pilani (others are in Pilani, Hyderabad, Goa, and Mumbai). In 25 years, more than 6,000 students have graduated from BITS Pilani Dubai, and about 50 start-ups have been founded here.
SP Jain School of Global Management (2004)
In 2004, SP Jain set up its first international campus in Dubai, followed by a campus in Singapore in 2006, and in Sydney in 2012. Today, it also has campuses in Mumbai and London, and last year it opened a campus in the US by acquiring the California Miramar University (CMU).
Amity University Dubai (2011)
Established in 2011, Amity University Dubai is home to more than 2,500 students from over 70 nationalities, with 85,000 alumni worldwide. The campus is spread over a 700,000 sq. ft. area. After this, Amity has also opened campuses in London, New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Uzbekistan, and Kenya, in addition to multiple campuses in India.
IIT Madras Zanzibar (2023)
It started in October 2023 with two courses – Bachelor of Science (Data Science & Artificial Intelligence), and MTech (Data Science & Artificial Intelligence). The BSc costs $12,000 per year (about Rs 10 lakh per year) and the MTech costs $4,000 per year. Accommodation charges are extra. Preeti Aghalayam, an IIT Madras alumna and professor in its Department of Chemical Engineering, has been appointed as the director of the Zanzibar campus. She is also the first-ever woman to be a director at any IIT.
Symbiosis Dubai (2024)
A new campus, the Symbiosis International University Dubai offers multiple undergraduate programmes, as well as an MBA.
IIT Delhi Abu Dhabi (2024)
It started as a temporary campus in Zayed University, and plans for a permanent campus are under way. Courses at the IIT Delhi Abu Dhabi campus will cover areas such as energy & sustainability, artificial intelligence, computer science & engineering, healthcare, mathematics & computing, and other disciplines of engineering, sciences & humanities.