Are there no Indian universities with potential for competing with the best in the world? And if the answer is yes, then what’s holding them back from becoming truly world-class?” These and similar questions would be answered at the Association of Indian Universities (AIU) conference on Internationalisation of Higher Education 2017, being hosted at Symbiosis International University (SIU)’s Lavale Campus from April 8 to 10. The three-day conference would be inaugurated by Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar and attended by over 100 vice-chancellors from Indian universities, both public and private, besides senior academicians, policy advisors, educational agencies and university representatives from the US, Europe, Asian countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Japan. The organisers said that through this conference they planned to present a policy paper to Javadekar on the roadmap to making Indian universities world-class. Amongst the prominent speakers at the conference include Prof Ellen Hazelkorn, policy advisor to Higher Education Authority (Ireland); Prof Philip Altbach, director, Center for International Higher Education (USA); Prof Bertil Andersson, president, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore); Prof Jamil Salmi, global tertiary education expert; besides UGC chairman Ved Prakash, D S Chauhan, president, AIU, D P Singh, director, NAAC. “Recently, the Indian government had announced that they will be selecting 10 public and 10 private universities to develop them into world-class universities and it is a very good decision. But what are the parameters that make a university world-class? Is research the core parameter, or does developing infrastructure suffice to make it amongst the best in the world? While the Indian government will work towards making these 20 universities world-class but how do others work towards making their varsities also amongst the best in the world. For this, we need to have dialogue and collaborations with world-class universities abroad. Hence we have organised this conferen