Written by Neeraj Mehra.
Image credit: 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 past decade, higher education has grown to be one of the significant instruments of diplomacy, creativity, and soft power. The element of academic cooperation has been an instrument of strategic connection of talent, research, and industry in the case of Taiwan and India, which are two of the knowledge economies in varying yet complementary levels of technological progress. The Taiwanese universities, which have been ranked among the best in the world for semiconductors, information technology, and applied sciences, have expanded their reach into the South and Southeast Asian markets. It is quite natural that India is a partner in this process, having its demographic dividend and rapidly emerging science and technology ecosystem.
The institutional premises of Taiwan-India cooperation were 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 several occasions. This MoU provided a healthy structure of collaboration between the universities, including the student and faculty exchange programs, joint research projects, and seminars. It also justified the collaboration without the existence of diplomatic relations between the countries, providing the higher education systems of both countries to establish direct relationships on the basis of culture and academics.
The outreach of Taiwan is a subset of its larger policy of New Southbound that focuses on the establishment of closer people-to-people and educational relationships towards South and Southeast Asia. In this context, education diplomacy is a kind of soft power strategy: it not only diversifies international connections of Taiwan but also creates goodwill and a source of talent in those parts of the world where technical skills are increasingly in demand. On the Indian side, the Ministry of Education and the All India Council on Technical Education (AICTE) have enabled the interaction, which is congruent with the national missions of India in semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and renewable technology.
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 these students earn postgraduate or doctoral degrees in engineering, computer science, and management. Universities in Taiwan have increasingly been modified to cater to international students and now have over 200 English-taught courses and organised Mandarin language assistance programs for beginners. The price-friendliness of education combined with the availability of scholarships has rendered Taiwan to be a more viable option among Indian students as their destination towards quality research exposure in Asia.
Taiwan offers a number of high-profile international student scholarships through the Taiwan Ministry of Education, such as the Taiwan Scholarship and the Huayu Enrichment Scholarship, which are combined with full or partial tuition waivers and a monthly 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, also complement these national scholarships with institutional fellowships with South Asian applicants.
Although the number of Indian students being attracted to Taiwan is rapidly growing, Taiwanese students studying in India are few. To some extent, this imbalance can be attributed to language and administrative obstacles and the institutional lack of marketing in Taiwan. However, the Taiwanese universities have been on the go in sending delegations to India, and this has resulted in major memoranda of understanding and joint projects.
In October 2025, the representatives of ten universities in Taiwan came to New Delhi to seek collaborative semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and sustainability programs, among the largest academic delegations in the past few years. Not to mention the Taiwan-India Higher Education Leaders Forum, during which more than seventy university heads and policymakers from both 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 promote collaboration in semiconductor training and personnel development. Such interactions highlight the strategic value that the two governments currently place on educational cooperation.
The Institution-to-institution partnerships have grown to be more specific and results-based. An example of such an agreement is that in 2024, the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) established a memorandum of understanding with National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) to encourage joint research in semiconductor manufacturing, advanced materials, and sustainable production. 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 an international internship and training program in the field of electric mobility and smart energy systems. The alliances demonstrate a new version of hybrid formation of academic-industrial collaboration, which corresponds to education and applied research and industry demands.
On the larger institutional front, National Chung Hsing University (NCHU) has collaborated with various Indian universities, such as IIT Delhi, IIT Ropar, and Chitkara University, and the areas of collaboration have been in agriculture, biotechnology, renewable energy and smart manufacturing. In mid-2025, the India Taipei Association sent a delegation to National Dong Hwa University (NDHU), where the officials of the Indian Ministry of Education, along with the Indian students studying in Taiwan, met to discuss common programs. 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 advantage of such collaboration. To Indian establishments, alliances with Taiwan give them access to hi-tech laboratories, research mentorship and exposure to hi-tech industrial systems. In the case of Taiwan, it can experience a more diverse academic environment and increase its global research presence by engaging in the extensive Taiwanese student and scientific community in India. In addition, academic cooperation doubles as a diplomatic tool, where both parties are free to keep working relations (without having to work through official political contacts).
Nevertheless, this partnership that is growing is constrained too. The former is the complexity in administration: the credit recognition, degree equivalence, and curriculum alignment are underdeveloped. In spite of the presence of MoUs, the process of the implementation of joint programs may presuppose going through two different accreditation regimes. Visa and immigration procedures, despite their improvement, also cause delays in faculty visits and short-term exchanges. Moreover, there is a lack of funding permanence; most of the programs are dependent on temporary grants or variable budgets. The language and cultural adaptation issues are also still there, with Indian students adapting to Mandarin-speaking and Taiwanese students adapting to an unfamiliar culture in India.
The other structural limitation is data opacity. No detailed statistics are published by either government on the subject of student mobility, offered scholarships, or research performance. Without systematic surveillance, the policy formulation is reactive and not evidence-based. The gap can be resolved by creating a common data platform or a bilateral education report on a yearly basis.
Regardless of these difficulties, the strategic logic of further cooperation is strong. The other advantage is that Taiwan leads in semiconductor technology, which is complementary to India, which wants to establish its own fabrication and design capacity. Synergistic research, co-supervised doctoral degrees and industry-related training might develop the skilled workforce that the two economies may need. Other convergences outside the semiconductors include renewable energy, biotechnology, and smart manufacturing – areas where precision engineering in Taiwan and scale of experimentation in India can serve each other.
It is possible to suggest several policy interventions that could help to cement the progress. First of all, data transparency should be institutionalised. The Joint Taiwan-India Higher Education Statistical Yearbook can indicate the movement of students, scholarship applications and research indicators. Second, an academic credit system such as the European credit transfer system must be adopted to ensure that courses are similar and can be easily completed to complete a dual degree. Third, mobility incentives would be the co-funded fellowships and co-supervised PhD programs, which could contribute to the attraction of the best talent. The joint research in the frontier technologies can be funded as a special Taiwan-India Academic Excellence Fund. Fourth, visa facilitation is to come first; special academic visa lanes through the Taipei Economic and Cultural Centre (TECC) in New Delhi and the India Taipei Association in Taipei would help save time in the administration.
And finally, the follow-through must be established inside the institution, which involves a permanent coordination mechanism. A Taiwan-India secretariat on Higher education that is overseen by an oversight board of FICHET and AIU would have a database of other partnerships in progress and keep track of the deliverables of MoUs, and hold an annual assessment summit. That would not even require continuity to be contingent on the change of leadership or budgeting.
This teaching of diplomacy is not just limited to the academic field. Taiwan may spread its relationship risks by seeking a politically neutral and demographically endowed ally in India when it seeks to establish means of establishing relationships, when relationships across the Strait are deemed doubtful. In the India scenario, the academic and technological ecosystem in Taiwan is one of the entry points to high-value sectors in East Asia. Education will be by then not a social good, but also a geopolitical policy – building talent, confidence and long-term cooperation.
Conclusively, the Taiwan-India higher education partnership has shifted from intermittent interactions to systematic interactions, which are based on governmental support and institutional entrepreneurship. The difficulty to come is how to turn passion into infrastructures: data systems, accreditation models and sustainable funding. In case they are realised, this alliance might become one of the greatest academic connections in the Indo-Pacific, which would be a combination of knowledge diplomacy and self-reliance in technology.
Neeraj Mehra is currently working as an Assistant to the Director of the Education Division at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Centre in New Delhi.
Taiwan Insight 