Australia’s University of New South Wales to open campus in Bengaluru: Dharmendra Pradhan

The University of New South Wales will become the seventh Australian university to open a campus in India, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan announced on Monday, December 8, 2025.

The campus will be opened in Bengaluru. Mr Pradhan said the University Grants Commission’s letter of intent was delivered to the university on the sidelines of the third Australia-India Education and Skills Council meeting in New Delhi on Monday.

At a press conference where leaders of both countries exchanged a number of university-university and university-government agreements and Memorandums of Understanding, Australian Education Minister Jason Clare said Australia “has an educational relationship with no other country in the world like it does with India”. He said he looked forward to advancing talks next year in Australia, where he hoped to take Mr Pradhan to Australia’s first “Hindu primary school”.

Mr Clare said it was “extraordinary” that such a school did not exist “at the moment” despite having a large population with roots in India, and that it would start soon.

Ten new India-Australia research projects were announced in artificial intelligence, quantum, biodiversity, MedTech, sustainability, smart mobility and space; It was funded by the Academic Research Collaboration Promotion Program for which ₹9.84 crore or AUD 1.64 million was approved.

Mr. Pradhan noted that inter-ministerial level talks focused only on higher education but both countries decided to expand discussions to the skills area as part of the broader knowledge area. He said discussions at the third AIESC moved for the first time to the school level and early childhood education, pathways for CBSE affiliated schools in Australia and professional development of teachers.

Mr. Pradhan said discussions at the council meeting reached the arena of sports education for the first time, discussing partnerships to integrate sports education throughout the educational years of children in India, from schools to universities, polytechnics and ITIs. Mr Pradhan said Australia had a culture of top medalists coming from campuses and a similar culture would be adopted for India as well.

Mr Pradhan added that this could not have come at a better time, given that Australia is all set to host the Olympics in 2032 and India has also bid to host the 2036 Olympics and is currently preparing to host the Commonwealth Games in 2030.

Mr Clare said the relationship between India and his country is one that “gets better, stronger and deeper with every meeting”, touching on the fact that the University of New South Wales will now be the seventh Australian university to establish a campus in India. While Mr Clare said the campus would offer courses in business, media, data science and cyber security, among others, Mr Pradhan said the courses would start in the next academic session.

“The university applied in June and the LOI is being submitted now. It was approved in record time,” he said.

Numerous letters of intent and MoUs were exchanged between Indian and Australian higher education and skills institutions throughout the day. These included an LoI between the two governments on early childhood education. This LoI was to align the CBSE (Early Childhood Care and Education) curriculum with Australia’s ECEC Certificate III, promoting workforce development and “curriculum innovation”.

James Cook University and the Government of Odisha have agreed to establish a Marine Ecological Research Center linked to the Odisha Marine Biotechnology and Innovation Corridor.

Similarly, the University of Western Australia and IIM in Mumbai and IIT in Dhanbad will collaborate on mining research, mining logistics and mining automation and sustainability. Deakin University and IIT at Roorkee have also agreed to establish a Center of Excellence in Disaster Resilience.