India improves tally in top-100 QS World University Rankings by Subject

IIT-Bombay's mineral & mining engineering and Delhi University's Development Studies are the top-ranked programmes from India

Indian higher-education institutes have improved their performance on the global stage, with a greater number getting ranked in the top-100 programs, according to the latest edition of the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings by Subject 2020.

As against 21 institutions getting ranked in 2019, the latest edition has seen 26 Indian departments entering the top-100 list for their subjects. Moreover, QS has also seen an increase in the number of Indian programs ranking among the global top 50.

In terms of institutes and subjects, India’s highest-ranked programs included Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay’s Mineral & Mining Engineering program at 41st rank globally, shared jointly with the University of Delhi's Development Studies program. Top-50 ranks have also been attained by IIT Kharagpur (46) for Mineral & Mining Engineering, IIT Delhi (49) for Electrical & Electronic Engineering and IIT Bombay (50) for Chemical Engineering.

Moreover, with nine of its programs getting ranked in the upper echelons, IIT Bombay emerged with more top-100 ranks than any other Indian university in QS World University Rankings by Subject 2020, followed by IIT Delhi with five programs in top-100 list. On the other hand, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Madras, and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore earned ranks in top-100 for three programs each.

In the business and management studies subject category, both Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad and IIM Bangalore were ranked in the 51-100 band.

According to QS, the rankings indicate India’s particular strength in the natural sciences, life sciences, and in engineering disciplines. The subject tables featuring the highest levels of Indian representation include chemistry, with 20 Indian universities being ranked in the subject along with computer science & information systems with 20 Indian institutions. Other top subjects included physics & astronomy with 18 Indian institutes, biological sciences (16), electrical engineering (15), chemical engineering (14) and mechanical engineering (14).

Moreover, there has been consistent Indian representation across academic disciplines, with 32 of the 48 tables featuring at least one Indian program.

Overall, full rankings dataset reveal Indian improvement in terms of 235 Indian programs being included in the ranking with 53 rise in rank while only 29 decline in rank. On the other hand, 111 programs remain stable within their position or band.

Compiled by global higher education analysts QS Quacquarelli Symonds, the rankings provide authoritative comparative analysis on the performance of 13,138 individual university programs, taken by students at 1368 universities in 83 locations across the world, across 48 academic disciplines and five broad faculty areas.

QS uses four key metrics to compile the rankings including academic reputation, employer reputation, citations per paper and the h-index which measures how productive an institution's research faculty are. However, the precise weighting of each metric varies by subject to reflect differing publication cultures across disciplines.

Meanwhile, globally, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) emerged as the world’s best-performing institution, achieving 12 number-one positions, followed by Harvard University with 11 number-one positions and University of Oxford with eight top ranked subjects.