An Australian master’s in Gujarat, and the students choosing it over the flight

Satya Vaibhav had planned to study abroad. The engineering graduate from Chennai had taken electives in ethical hacking and settled on cyber security as a career. Then a family emergency derailed those plans. He enrolled instead at Deakin University’s campus inside GIFT City, the special financial centre on the Sabarmati river near Gandhinagar in Gujarat. By his own reckoning he is now saving between 60 and 70 lakh rupees. “These systems are directly implemented with regulations and rules from Australia,” he told Careers360 of the coursework, which is precisely the appeal. He lives in a rented flat with his father about 10 kilometres from campus, and he is studying now, not deferring a dream.

The first foreign university to stay

Deakin became the first foreign university to open a full branch campus in India when it began teaching at GIFT City in July 2024. The arrangement was made possible by the International Financial Services Centres Authority, whose 2022 rules let overseas institutions run their own campuses in the zone with control over fees and curriculum, outside the usual Indian regulators. Deakin, a public university based in Victoria, began with two postgraduate degrees there, a Master of Business Analytics and a Master of Cyber Security (Professional), each 18 months of full-time, on-campus study, and lists a Master of Applied Artificial Intelligence (Professional) for its 2027 intake. The debut intake was modest, about 43 students against an early expectation of 15 to 20. That first cohort graduated in March 2026 in Australian academic regalia, and in July 2026 the campus welcomed its third cohort.

Among the newer arrivals is Diya Rajesh Jimuliya, a Master of Business Analytics student who sat through an industry orientation session and came away energised. “It was an extremely motivating session,” she said in the university’s own account of the intake. “We got to know what skills would matter in the future.” The cohort she joined has equal numbers of men and women and draws students from across India, led by Gujarat, a small sign that the campus is broadening beyond its home state.

Jobs, and the NAB question

The early doubt about any new campus is whether serious employers will hire from it. Some answers have arrived. National Australia Bank, one of the country’s big four lenders, recruited from the first cohort, then returned for the second and made dual offers of internships and full-time roles to four Business Analytics students, Ruhani Patel, Aryan Chasia, Raghav Agrawal and Arushi Jain, at its Gurugram operations. Dr Deepak Bajaj, the campus’s academic and campus director, called the bank’s return “a strong validation of the quality, capability, and global readiness of our students.” Students from the inaugural cyber security cohort, meanwhile, were picked up by the Ahmedabad-based Adani Group. Deakin has been unusually candid that the campus is not yet profitable and will not be for several years, which fits a fee deliberately held well below the onshore price.

Wollongong and the fintech bet

Deakin is not alone on the GIFT City campus strip. The University of Wollongong, from New South Wales, opened its own India campus there in November 2024, a few months behind, wagering on financial technology rather than analytics and security. It teaches a Master of Financial Technology over 18 months, a 24-month extension that folds in a workplace internship, and a graduate certificate, with curriculum ties to firms including IBM and the business software company Odoo. Marisa Mastroianni, managing director and group chief executive of UOW Global Enterprises, put the logic simply at the launch. “Students shouldn’t have to travel across continents to access Australia’s world-class education,” she said. “With UOW India, we’re bringing global learning to their doorstep in GIFT City.” The first cohort was tiny, just nine students, each promised a fully funded immersion trip to Wollongong’s campus in Dubai.

One of those nine was Cerin Elsa Joji, a 23-year-old from Ahmedabad who became the inaugural recipient of Wollongong’s Women Leaders in FinTech scholarship, created to lift female participation in a male-heavy field. She has been level-headed about both the trade-off and the upside. “In GIFT City, we are surrounded by corporations which is an advantage for us,” she told Careers360, adding that events she had attended elsewhere brought recruiters rather than people working in the industry, while at UoW “we can directly talk to the industry people.” A classmate, 26-year-old Mukesh Iyer from Mumbai, valued the intimacy of a small campus. “The Australian and New Zealand COO would be walking to lunch with us. He would know the students by their names,” he said. Nimay Kalyani, who directs the Wollongong India campus, has resisted overselling it, acknowledging that the campus “faced a degree of scepticism because Australian universities do not guarantee jobs.”

What it costs, and what it saves

The arithmetic is what draws most families. Deakin’s GIFT City degrees carry an estimated total fee of about 39,600 Australian dollars for the 2027 intake, and Wollongong’s sit near 16 lakh rupees, both billed in Australian dollars. The same Master of Business Analytics taught in Victoria is listed at about 45,800 Australian dollars a year, before rent, food and airfares in one of the world’s dearer countries. Kranali Shah, a 26-year-old analytics student, drives close to two hours a day from Ahmedabad because housing inside GIFT City is costly and the district is still half-built. “The surrounding area does not have any residents and Gandhinagar starts four to five kilometres from GIFT City,” she said. She expects a starting package of 13 to 15 lakh rupees once she is placed, and treats the long commute as the price of keeping the degree affordable.

That calculation has sharpened as Australia has made its onshore route harder and dearer. The student visa application charge rose from 710 Australian dollars to 1,600 on 1 July 2024, to 2,000 on 1 July 2025 and to 2,500 on 1 July 2026. For a student weighing risk against reward, a guaranteed seat in Gujarat can look steadier than an expensive application onshore.

The pathway, and the catch

Both universities promise a taste of the parent institution. Deakin runs immersion programs at its Australian campuses, and Wollongong flies its first students to Dubai. What neither can offer is the reward that long pulled Indian students towards Australia in the first place, the post-study work visa and the migration route that could follow. A degree earned at GIFT City is a genuine Australian credential, but it does not carry the right to stay and work in Australia afterwards. For students whose goal was always a job in India, or who simply could not risk the cost and uncertainty of moving, that boundary hardly registers.

The GIFT City experiment is still small, a few dozen students split between two campuses on a riverfront that is mostly cranes and glass towers. Yet it answers a question the visa squeeze has made urgent. For families who cannot spend a crore rupees, or who no longer wish to gamble it on a tightening visa regime, an Australian master’s taught 10 kilometres from home, with NAB and Adani already hiring from the lecture rooms, is worth taking seriously. Whether it grows into a regional hub or stays a boutique offering will rest with the students now doing two-hour commutes and spending their savings, betting that a degree with an Australian name and an Indian postcode will carry them where they want to go.