The third edition of the iHED conference from 1 to 3 March 2023 brought together more than 320 participants from 230 institutions from seven countries, had discussions about structured cooperation and strategic partnerships between Higher Education Institutions in India, Germany and other European countries.

The iHED online conference 2023 was organised by the DAAD Regional Office New Delhi together with the Association of Indian Universities (AIU). This year the partner country was Romania, which is a part of the European Higher Education System, a member of the European Union in the Erasmus programme.

This edition of the conference focussed on the diverse aspects of cooperation projects and partnerships. During 4 sessions, 3 panel discussions and 1 speed presentation, with more than 25 speakers, the discussions focussed on different models and insights into the cooperations addressing international bilateral, multilateral, interinstitutional cooperations, strategic partnerships and working in consortia between Europe and South Asia. The quality of the presentations by Indian state universities during various sessions were very good.

In various sessions the speakers presented best practices on partnership programs and consortia, funding for cooperation projects, measurement of impact of cooperation and establishing double and joint degree programmes.

During the panel discussion on structured exchange programmes, representatives from universities in India and Germany gave their insights about the opportunities and challenges arising from structural differences in the higher education systems while setting up semester exchange, dual/double degree and joint degree programs. As India is currently focussing on Double Degree programmes, it is a good opportunity for the institutions in India and Germany for such cooperation projects.

In another panel discussion, there was a fruitful exchange of dialogue and discussions with the Romanian Minister of education, Dr Ligia Deca, Dr Choltis Dhirathiti, Executive Director, ASEAN University Network and Dr Bharat Chandra Rout, University Grants Commission, India. They addressed current developments in internationalisation with a focus on regional networks and cooperation between Europe and Asia.

In addition, representatives from DAAD, DFG, Indo-German Center for Science and Technology, the ERASMUS agency in Germany and DWIH presented various cooperation funding schemes including the European funding.

More than 300 one-on-one meetings took place during the conference on a virtual networking platform.