India targeting enrolment of half million foreign students by 2047: Niti Aayog CEO

NEW DELHI: India is targeting enrolling half a million foreign students by 2047, Niti Aayog CEO BVR Subrahmanyam said on Wednesday. Subrahmanyam made the comments while addressing the 18th FICCI Higher Education Summit. He also said technology is going to "blow up" the higher education sector and the universities have to embrace Artificial Intelligence in a big way to stay relevant and competitive.

"NITI Aayog is preparing a vision document for 2047 and education has a separate role in it. One of the important points in this include that, by 2047, we aim to target half a million foreign students in India. We should become the global provider of education by improving our quality, brand value and improve our rankings which are globally recognised," he said.

The Niti Aayog CEO asserted that there is a need to create more education cities in India. He urged the private sector to further expand the higher education ecosystem and ensure more international students are attracted to India, along with encouraging domestic students to study in the country.

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"We need to be more innovative in the higher education sector. We need to focus on revamping the educational system so that the students are industry ready," he said. Highlighting the importance of newer technology, Subrahmanyam said, "Technology is going to blow up the higher education sector (in India). The universities have to embrace AI (Artificial Intelligence) in a big way to stay relevant and competitive."

"Universities will invariably play a huge role in developing the right thought process of students. The Indian universities, higher educational institutions have a period of 25 years to exploit the potential of India's demographic dividend," he added.