Statsguru: 6 charts show how Indian universities fare in global rankings

Three Indian universities were in the top 200 in the world, according to recently released Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings. The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay and IIT Delhi both made the cut. Also on the list was Bengaluru’s Indian Institute of Science, which stood out for its perfect research score.

However, rankings over a longer period shows that each of India’s top universities have actually been sliding on global rankings scale over the last few years (chart 1). A key issue has been the number of foreign students, which has a bearing on the ranking of universities globally. It is also one of the reasons why institutes fall significantly behind compared to leaders like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Another reason is the international faculty ratio (chart 2).

Both these factors indicate the overall trend. Foreign students have been a minority here. The ratio of such students to overall enrolments was in fact lower in 2019-20, according to the All India Survey on Higher Education, compared to 2015-16 (chart 3). The ones who do come to India are generally from neighbouring countries. Nepal accounts for more than a quarter of India’s foreign students (chart 4).

 

Faculty has also been a problem for higher education outside of elite institutions. There has been no major increase in the number of teachers available (chart 5), despite an acknowledged impact on learning and research outcomes. The situation will only get worse with an increasing number of students enroling for higher education. The gross enrolment ratio, a measure of the proportion of the college-going population pursuing higher education, has risen from 24.5 in 2015-16 to 27.1 in 2019-20 (chart 6).

 

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