India Higher Education Research Network (IHERN) is organizing the flagship higher education research conference. The India Higher Education Research Conference (IHERC) will be conducted on 21-22 November, 2025 at IIT Delhi. The conference will serve as a platform for presenting high-quality research of relevance to Indian higher education, and also for discussing practice and policy issues relating to Indian higher education. The conference will enable and promote research in the scholarly field of higher education, and linking the same with the practice and policy of higher education in India.
IHERC 2025 will be at the intersection of various scholarly fields, including but not limited to higher education studies, the empirical context of higher education in India, and the practice and policy of higher education in India. The conference expects to have participation from the global scholarly community, with interests in Indian higher education.
Higher education research is a growing field that explores how universities and colleges function, evolve, and impact society. It draws from disciplines like sociology, economics, public policy, and education studies to understand how students learn, how institutions are governed, how policies are shaped, and how teaching and research can be made more inclusive, equitable, and effective.
This area of research helps us ask important questions about access, quality, funding, innovation, and purpose in higher education—questions that are central to shaping the future of learning and knowledge creation in India and across the world.
The conference will be organized around contemporary topics about higher education in India, including but not limited to the below
Special sessions will focus on specific thematic areas within the broader conference topics. Authors submitting their abstracts to the conference will have the option to submit their papers under a relevant special session. Details of the special sessions are provided below.
The proposer for this special session is The Commonwealth Tertiary Education Facility (CTEF) (https://ctef.com.my/v2/) , which is a collaborative entity between the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia and the Commonwealth Secretariat in London (https://thecommonwealth.org/). CTEF role is to share best practices in the development of Malaysia higher education system with other developing countries in the Commonwealth. In Malaysia, Transnational education (TNE) in the form of partnerships with foreign institutions, started in the early 1950s. Over the decades, Malaysia has developed a robust TNE framework, hosting numerous international branch campuses and fostering collaborations with foreign universities. Arguably, TNE has become a key driver for Malaysia’s engagement in global higher education, enabling Malaysians and other students in Asia to access international qualifications. Over the years, Malaysia has and continues to host numerous international branch campuses, collaborates with prestigious universities from the UK, Australia, Japan, and China, and promotes blended learning models to enhance accessibility and quality. In 1998, the first branch campus, Monash University Malaysia, was established, followed quickly by the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus in 2000. These international branch campuses have set a benchmark for quality assurance and institutional collaboration, reinforced by a proactive approach and regulatory regime by the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA).
In India, the development of TNE is still at an early stage. However, the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 encourages international collaboration and allows foreign universities to establish campuses in India. The increasing demand for higher education in India presents an opportunity to structure the TNE expansion, particularly in technology, healthcare, and management. By leveraging Malaysia’s experiences, potential research areas for India’s TNE development are wide-ranging, such as developing policy framework for sustainable TNE growth, curriculum development, enhanced student mobility and employability, and public-private partnerships in the provision of TNE.
Digital technology has emerged as a viable tool to support teaching and learning in higher education globally. The role of digital technology becomes much more vital for the Indian higher education sector, which is the second-largest higher education system in the world with an enrolment of 43.3 million and a Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) of 28.4%, which National Education Policy 2020 (NEP) aims to increase to 50% by 2035. There are three vital aspects of digital technology in Indian higher education. The first is understanding how higher education institutions (HEIs) in India integrate digital technology into teaching and learning. The second is institutional policies and mechanisms regarding the use of digital technology. The third significant aspect is understanding the factors that work as promoters and inhibitors. This special session will specifically answer three vital questions
Research on interdisciplinarity highlights both its potential benefits and inherent complexities. While challenges such as the ongoing climate catastrophe, transformational changes in technology and geopolitics risks abound, critical questions on the ability of higher education systems to respond to them are being raised (Miotto et al., 2020). The need for interdisciplinarity has been a much-cited reform (Gibbons et al., 1994). Along these lines, India's National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 advocates a shift toward flexible, multidisciplinary learning, recommending Multidisciplinary Education and Research Universities to embed interdisciplinarity structurally (NEP, 2020). Similarly, the University Grant Commission's (UGC) (2022) guidelines emphasize curricular flexibility, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and institutional integration. However, scholars note that translating these policy aspirations into practice remains uneven as Indian universities continue to navigate structural constraints and entrenched disciplinary boundaries (Chandra, 2017; Jalote, 2021). Literature suggests that while structural commitments often increase interdisciplinary outputs, they may not consistently translate into greater scholarly impact, especially across cognitively distant fields (Leahey et al., 2017; Leahey & Barringer, 2020).
This special session at IHERC 2025 invites theoretical contributions, empirical studies, institutional case analyses, and practitioner insights examining how interdisciplinarity is conceptualized, structured, and experienced within Indian higher education. Submissions may address governance models, curriculum design, faculty and student experiences, institutional practices, and stakeholder perspectives. Key questions include: How is interdisciplinarity implemented beyond policy rhetoric? What institutional structures and practices facilitate or hinder interdisciplinary integration? How do faculty and students navigate interdisciplinary identities, and what are the implications for knowledge legitimacy, professional careers, and graduate pathways? How do external stakeholders perceive interdisciplinary qualifications, and how might global practices and experiences inform India's evolving interdisciplinary strategies?
The session will examine connections between the key challenges and opportunities to extend access to higher education for those from low income and other marginalised communities in India and the rest of the world. India has ambitions to extend participation in its higher education system whilst also creating opportunities for those from lower caste and income groups as well as rural, disabled and other groups who face difficulties in entering higher education. Achieving these goals will be challenging. There is no country in the world where inequalities in access and success by social background do not exist. However, there is a growing community of researchers, policymakers academics and leaders who are working individually and together on ways of meeting this challenge. It is vital that work in India can be strengthened by deepening the theoretical basis and practical knowledge relating to equity work through dialogue nationally and globally. The session will include a keynote address which brings the present Indian context together with the global picture now. We would then like to feature papers that examined the equitable access and success issue in India from a thematic perspective (e.g. looking at financial barriers and access: how higher education is understood in different communities, student experiences of specific student populations); a policy perspective at ether the national, regional or institutional level and potentially a paper the includes content from India and another country(ies). We will be keen in the session to ensure that there is time for discussion to explore bridging and common points emerging from across the papers and in particular looking to establish several areas where further enquiry and collaboration would be valuable. Given the present geo-political climate a session that looks at equity in higher education placing India in the global context that is knowledge and solution focused could be extremely valuable.
Historically, the relationship that higher education institutions built with both state and society have not remained static, they have mutated and transformed over time. The changes that have affected higher education have not remained restricted to internal dynamics within institutions but extended to the manner in which they responded to changes taking place in society at large. We identify three important points in the history of higher education that have an important bearing on the state of higher education today. The first pertains to the emergence of the university of teaching and research in the nineteenth century and its subsequent adoption as a model in different parts of the world. Second, the massification of higher education and connected to it the idea that higher education as a site of social mobility and finally the rise of neo-liberal globalization and the concomitant changes it has affected in higher education. Higher education as a sector today is, in a manner of speaking, witnessing the culmination of the above three processes. It can be argued that we are still seeing them unfold and it is hard to predict how they will ultimately culminate. But there are certain changes underway today that prompt us to raise specific questions about the purpose of higher education today.
The expansion of higher education, both in terms of number of institutions and students has resulted in larger and more diverse classrooms. While this has posed challenges to the expectations from teachers, it has also led to a transformation of how teaching is framed in institutions. As the very act of teaching is sought to be captured through quantifiable metrics, teachers are also expected to produce research output which adheres to quantifiable standards. In other words, the bureaucratization of the university is a process that is well underway. In the market place of higher education today institutions are engaging in product- differentiation, also to have a competitive edge over other intuitions. The issue of measurement of teaching and research as they define the university today also end up creating changes in other related spheres of higher education as both intended and unintended consequences.
Policy initiatives such as the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which targets a 50% Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) by 2035, reflect ambitions for further expansion. However, this is accompanied by increased regulation, such as the establishment of the National Testing Agency, which introduces new layers of gatekeeping. While centralization and uniformity may compromise diversity, their long-term effects on quality and professionalization remain uncertain. The globalized world and its reliance on technology as the interface of information dissemination has created inter-connectedness in the challenge to the process of knowledge production. Institutions today are also competing with modes of disinformation and misinformation which have challenged the knowledge that is produced and disseminated through institutions. It remains to be seen how higher education institutions respond to this challenge.
The above described processes and issues are at play in the context of higher education in India. This special session seeks to put together a set of presentations which will address some of the issues discussed above while framing the discussion in the context of the purpose of higher education. For multiple reasons the question about the purpose of higher education is up for discussion in the market place for ideas, the panel seeks to intervene in that discussion with perspective that address different facets of the higher education sector in India today.
Vice Chancellor, BITS Pilani, India
Professor, University of Melbourne, Australia
Ahmedabad University, India
Boston College, USA
Imperial College London, UK
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India
Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence, Delhi
University of Catania
Italy
University of Melbourne
Australia
Australian National University, Australia
Manchester Institute of Education
University Sains Malaysia (USM)
Jawaharlal Nehru Univ, India
Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru
The Convergence Foundation
O P Jindal Global University
Manipal Academy of Higher Education
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India
We welcome sponsorship support to help make IHERC 2025 a success.
Partnering with us is a great opportunity to align with the goals of the India Higher Education Research Network (IHERN) and connect with a vibrant community of researchers, policymakers, and institutions.
Interested in sponsoring IHERC 2025?
To learn more about sponsorship opportunities, please email us at gauri@iiitd.ac.in
