Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal recently said education as a service holds immense potential to boost India’s export earnings while expanding the global reach of the country’s higher education institutions.

Speaking at the Vice Chancellors’ Conclave on “Reimagining Internationalisation of Higher Education for Viksit Bharat 2047”, Goyal said India must leverage its academic strengths to position itself as a major destination for global students.

The conclave, organized by the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT) under the Ministry of Commerce, brought together academic leaders and policymakers to explore strategies for internationalising higher education. Discussions focused on global partnerships, student mobility, regulatory reforms and dual-degree programmes aimed at strengthening the global competitiveness of Indian universities.

Goyal said emerging global trends indicate that future growth engines will increasingly be developing economies such as India. As a result, students from developed nations will benefit from exposure to India and its evolving economic and social landscape.

The minister said this shift is already visible in negotiations over services chapters in India’s Free Trade Agreements. According to him, the nine FTAs concluded under the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi have largely been with developed economies, helping expand India’s integration with global trade networks.

“India no longer negotiates from a position of weakness or a colonial mindset,” Goyal said, adding that the country now engages with the world confidently and from a position of strength.

Highlighting India’s role in the global economy, he noted that the country currently contributes nearly 20 per cent of global growth. In the coming decades, he said, young professionals across the world will increasingly need to engage with fast-growing economies such as India.

Goyal credited the transformation of the education sector to the National Education Policy 2020, which he said was drafted after extensive consultations with educators and stakeholders across the country and abroad. Nearly three lakh suggestions were examined before the policy was finalized.

The policy, he said, has opened India’s education system to international collaboration, allowing foreign universities to establish campuses in India, enabling joint and dual-degree programmes, and promoting cross-border student exchanges.

He suggested innovative academic models to attract international students, such as programmes where students spend part of their study period in India and the rest at their home institutions. Such arrangements, he said, would give students deeper exposure to the thinking, culture and economic dynamics of developing countries.

Addressing Vice Chancellors at the conclave, Goyal described them as “architects of India’s future” responsible for shaping the next generation. He stressed that universities must constantly evolve with changing global trends and that teachers must undergo continuous retraining to remain aligned with modern curricula and emerging knowledge systems.

“Students cannot be prepared for the future through outdated curricula,” he said, urging institutions to adopt agile academic frameworks and anticipate emerging opportunities.

The minister also emphasized the growing importance of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing and machine learning for India’s economic future. Educational institutions, he said, must update curricula to reflect these shifts while also introducing subjects related to international trade and India’s Free Trade Agreements.

Goyal expressed confidence that such reforms would eventually reverse the current trend of large numbers of Indian students studying abroad. At present, around 28 Indian students leave the country for higher education for every one foreign student studying in India.

He said the goal should be to turn India into a major global education destination, attracting around 1.3 million international students while significantly reducing outbound student migration.

Calling for stronger collaboration between academia, government and industry, the minister said such partnerships would be critical to internationalizing India’s higher education system and realizing the vision of a developed India by 2047.