Written by Neeraj Mehra.
Image credit score: Taiwan Delegation at 2025 APAIE in India: Boosting Taiwan-India Higher Education Ties by Foundation for International Cooperation in Higher Education of Taiwan (FICHET).
In the previous decade, increased training has grown to be one of many important devices of diplomacy, creativity, and mushy energy. The factor of educational cooperation has been an instrument of strategic connection of expertise, analysis, and {industry} within the case of Taiwan and India, that are two of the information economies in various but complementary ranges of technological progress. The Taiwanese universities, which have been ranked among the many greatest on this planet for semiconductors, info know-how, and utilized sciences, have expanded their attain into the South and Southeast Asian markets. It is sort of pure that India is a accomplice on this course of, having its demographic dividend and quickly rising science and know-how ecosystem.
The institutional premises of Taiwan-India cooperation have been established by the Memorandum of Understanding between the Foundation of International Cooperation in Higher Education of Taiwan (FICHET) and the Association of Indian Universities (AIU), which was initially signed in 2010 and was renewed on a number of events. This MoU supplied a wholesome construction of collaboration between the colleges, together with the coed and college trade packages, joint analysis tasks, and seminars. It additionally justified the collaboration with out the existence of diplomatic relations between the nations, offering the upper training techniques of each nations to ascertain direct relationships on the premise of tradition and lecturers.
The outreach of Taiwan is a subset of its bigger coverage of New Southbound that focuses on the institution of nearer people-to-people and academic relationships in direction of South and Southeast Asia. In this context, training diplomacy is a form of mushy energy technique: it not solely diversifies worldwide connections of Taiwan but additionally creates goodwill and a supply of expertise in these elements of the world the place technical expertise are more and more in demand. On the Indian aspect, the Ministry of Education and the All India Council on Technical Education (AICTE) have enabled the interplay, which is congruent with the nationwide missions of India in semiconductors, synthetic intelligence, and renewable know-how.
By 2025, about 1,495 Indian students had been enrolled in Taiwanese universities and comprised a small yet gradually expanding community of 47,600 international students on the island. Almost two-thirds of those college students earn postgraduate or doctoral levels in engineering, pc science, and administration. Universities in Taiwan have more and more been modified to cater to worldwide college students and now have over 200 English-taught programs and organised Mandarin language help packages for rookies. The price-friendliness of training mixed with the provision of scholarships has rendered Taiwan to be a extra viable possibility amongst Indian college students as their vacation spot in direction of high quality analysis publicity in Asia.
Taiwan provides various high-profile worldwide scholar scholarships by means of the Taiwan Ministry of Education, such because the Taiwan Scholarship and the Huayu Enrichment Scholarship, that are mixed with full or partial tuition waivers and a month-to-month allowance. In 2024, there were more than 100 Indian students who were awarded in this way, and the number increases every year. Some Taiwanese universities, e.g., National Taiwan University and National Tsing Hua University, additionally complement these nationwide scholarships with institutional fellowships with South Asian candidates.
Although the variety of Indian college students being interested in Taiwan is quickly rising, Taiwanese college students learning in India are few. To some extent, this imbalance will be attributed to language and administrative obstacles and the institutional lack of selling in Taiwan. However, the Taiwanese universities have been on the go in sending delegations to India, and this has resulted in main memoranda of understanding and joint tasks.
In October 2025, the representatives of ten universities in Taiwan came to New Delhi to hunt collaborative semiconductors, synthetic intelligence, and sustainability packages, among the many largest tutorial delegations prior to now few years. Not to say the Taiwan-India Higher Education Leaders Forum, throughout which greater than seventy college heads and policymakers from each nations gathered. Previously, in November 2023, a delegation of seventeen people, headed by Taiwan’s Political Deputy Minister of Education, Dr. Mon-Chi Lio, travelled to India to advertise collaboration in semiconductor coaching and personnel improvement. Such interactions spotlight the strategic worth that the 2 governments at present place on instructional cooperation.
The Institution-to-institution partnerships have grown to be extra particular and results-based. An instance of such an settlement is that in 2024, the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) established a memorandum of understanding with National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) to encourage joint analysis in semiconductor manufacturing, superior supplies, and sustainable manufacturing. The Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology (VNIT), Nagpur, has also entered into a tripartite arrangement with the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST) and the Delta Electronics India, which entails the formation of a world internship and coaching program within the discipline of electrical mobility and sensible vitality techniques. The alliances reveal a brand new model of hybrid formation of academic-industrial collaboration, which corresponds to training and utilized analysis and {industry} calls for.
On the bigger institutional entrance, National Chung Hsing University (NCHU) has collaborated with various Indian universities, equivalent to IIT Delhi, IIT Ropar, and Chitkara University, and the areas of collaboration have been in agriculture, biotechnology, renewable vitality and sensible manufacturing. In mid-2025, the India Taipei Association despatched a delegation to National Dong Hwa University (NDHU), the place the officers of the Indian Ministry of Education, together with the Indian college students learning in Taiwan, met to debate frequent packages. About the same time, the TCU of Taiwan organised a trip to southern India, visiting universities in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and looking into the mechanisms of exchange.
It has a multipronged benefit of such collaboration. To Indian institutions, alliances with Taiwan give them entry to hi-tech laboratories, analysis mentorship and publicity to hi-tech industrial techniques. In the case of Taiwan, it could expertise a extra numerous tutorial atmosphere and enhance its world analysis presence by participating within the intensive Taiwanese scholar and scientific neighborhood in India. In addition, tutorial cooperation doubles as a diplomatic device, the place each events are free to maintain working relations (with out having to work by means of official political contacts).
Nevertheless, this partnership that’s rising is constrained too. The former is the complexity in administration: the credit score recognition, diploma equivalence, and curriculum alignment are underdeveloped. In spite of the presence of MoUs, the method of the implementation of joint packages might presuppose going by means of two completely different accreditation regimes. Visa and immigration procedures, regardless of their enchancment, additionally trigger delays in college visits and short-term exchanges. Moreover, there’s a lack of funding permanence; many of the packages are depending on non permanent grants or variable budgets. The language and cultural adaptation points are additionally nonetheless there, with Indian college students adapting to Mandarin-speaking and Taiwanese college students adapting to an unfamiliar tradition in India.
The different structural limitation is information opacity. No detailed statistics are printed by both authorities as regards to scholar mobility, provided scholarships, or analysis efficiency. Without systematic surveillance, the coverage formulation is reactive and never evidence-based. The hole will be resolved by creating a typical information platform or a bilateral training report on a yearly foundation.
Regardless of those difficulties, the strategic logic of additional cooperation is powerful. The different benefit is that Taiwan leads in semiconductor know-how, which is complementary to India, which desires to ascertain its personal fabrication and design capability. Synergistic analysis, co-supervised doctoral levels and industry-related coaching may develop the expert workforce that the 2 economies might have. Other convergences exterior the semiconductors embrace renewable vitality, biotechnology, and sensible manufacturing – areas the place precision engineering in Taiwan and scale of experimentation in India can serve one another.
It is feasible to recommend a number of coverage interventions that would assist to cement the progress. First of all, information transparency must be institutionalised. The Joint Taiwan-India Higher Education Statistical Yearbook can point out the motion of scholars, scholarship purposes and analysis indicators. Second, an educational credit score system such because the European credit score switch system should be adopted to make sure that programs are comparable and will be simply accomplished to finish a twin diploma. Third, mobility incentives can be the co-funded fellowships and co-supervised PhD packages, which might contribute to the attraction of the very best expertise. The joint analysis within the frontier applied sciences will be funded as a particular Taiwan-India Academic Excellence Fund. Fourth, visa facilitation is to return first; particular tutorial visa lanes by means of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Centre (TECC) in New Delhi and the India Taipei Association in Taipei would assist save time within the administration.
And lastly, the follow-through should be established contained in the establishment, which entails a everlasting coordination mechanism. A Taiwan-India secretariat on Higher training that’s overseen by an oversight board of FICHET and AIU would have a database of different partnerships in progress and hold monitor of the deliverables of MoUs, and maintain an annual evaluation summit. That wouldn’t even require continuity to be contingent on the change of management or budgeting.
This educating of diplomacy is not only restricted to the educational discipline. Taiwan might unfold its relationship dangers by searching for a politically impartial and demographically endowed ally in India when it seeks to ascertain means of building relationships, when relationships throughout the Strait are deemed uncertain. In the India state of affairs, the educational and technological ecosystem in Taiwan is likely one of the entry factors to high-value sectors in East Asia. Education can be by then not a social good, but additionally a geopolitical coverage – constructing expertise, confidence and long-term cooperation.
Conclusively, the Taiwan-India increased training partnership has shifted from intermittent interactions to systematic interactions, that are primarily based on governmental help and institutional entrepreneurship. The problem to return is the best way to flip ardour into infrastructures: information techniques, accreditation fashions and sustainable funding. In case they’re realised, this alliance may turn into one of many best tutorial connections within the Indo-Pacific, which might be a mix of data diplomacy and self-reliance in know-how.
Neeraj Mehra is at present working as an Assistant to the Director of the Education Division on the Taipei Economic and Cultural Centre in New Delhi.