The Ministry of Human Resource Development has approved the 'Study in India' programme with, inter-alia, the following objectives: • To improve India's soft power with a focus on the neighbouring countries and utilize it as a tool in diplomacy. • To boost the number of inbound international Students in India. • To double India's market share of the world's education exports from less than 1% to 2%. • Increase in the contribution of int. student in the form of direct spends, indirect spends, spill-over effects. • Improvement in overall quality of the higher education. • Increase in the global ranking of India as an educational destination. • To decrease the export – Import imbalance in the number of international students. • Growth of India's global market share of international students. The 'Study in India' programme's primary aim is to target foreign students by branding India as an attractive education destination. According to the existing Government framework, provision of 10 to 15% supernumerary seats for foreign students is there. The 'Study in India' programme would target the foreign students to be admitted as per this provision, which would not have any kind of adverse impact on the number of seats or admission of the Indian students.
The Government has accepted an expenditure of Rs. 150 crores for the 'Study in India' programme for the period of two years 2018-19 and 2019-20 which will be primarily for brand promotion activities.