For a country that sends millions of students abroad every year, this raises a hard question:
Why do Indian universities not feature among the world’s academic elite?
Global rankings don’t just measure teaching. They mainly judge:
Research output & impact
Citations per paper
PhD and post-doctoral research
International faculty & students
Academic reputation
Industry partnerships
Research funding
The Shanghai Ranking focuses almost entirely on research excellence and Nobel-level impact.
THE blends teaching, research and global outlook.
QS weighs reputation, employer feedback and research influence.
Indian universities do well in student volume and teaching, but perform poorly in the areas that carry the most weight: research depth, global impact and international collaboration.
India produces a lot of research papers, but their global influence is low.
While countries like the US, China, Germany and the UK publish fewer but more impactful papers, Indian research is cited less often, meaning it shapes global knowledge less.
One big reason is funding:
| Country | R&D spending (% of GDP) |
|---|---|
| South Korea | 4%+ |
| United States | ~3% |
| China | ~2.5% |
| India | < 0.8% |
Less funding means:
Weaker labs
Fewer PhD scholarships
Limited long-term projects
Smaller research teams
Most Indian professors also have heavy teaching loads, leaving little time for deep research.
World-class universities are built around doctoral and post-doctoral researchers.
At Harvard, MIT or Oxford, they are the engine of discovery.
In India:
PhD enrolment is relatively small
Post-doctoral positions are rare
Research continuity is weak
Promotion in Indian universities is often based on seniority and service rules, not research excellence, which discourages high-impact academic work.
Top global universities attract:
Foreign faculty
International students
Cross-border research projects
Indian institutions struggle because of:
Salary caps
Visa rules
Regulatory controls
Limited recruitment flexibility
This keeps Indian campuses largely domestic, hurting their global outlook score.
IITs were built to train engineers, not to be full-scale global research universities.
Top global institutions combine:
Engineering
Medicine
Life sciences
Law
Public policy
Humanities
Social sciences
Under one roof.
An IIT may produce brilliant engineers, but it doesn’t have:
A medical school
A research hospital
A major social science faculty
Rankings measure total knowledge production across disciplines, not just technical excellence.
Indian universities are controlled by:
UGC
State governments
Ministries
Professional councils
This limits:
Hiring speed
Salary competitiveness
International partnerships
Curriculum reform
Global universities operate with financial and academic autonomy, allowing them to respond quickly to research opportunities.
Some Indian private universities like Ashoka, OP Jindal and Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham have entered global rankings (usually in the 500–1000 band).
They perform better because they have:
Faster hiring
International faculty
Flexible governance
Global collaborations
But they are still far from the top 200.
Yes — but not quickly.
China’s rise in global rankings took over 20 years of:
Heavy R&D spending
University restructuring
Global recruitment
Doctoral expansion
India’s NEP 2020, Institutions of Eminence and research funding boosts are steps in the right direction — but global rankings reflect decades of accumulated research culture, not quick policy fixes.
India’s universities are not weak — they are structurally incomplete for global competition.
To reach the world’s top 100, India must build:
Research-driven universities
Strong PhD ecosystems
Global faculty pipelines
Multi-disciplinary campuses
Autonomous governance
Until then, Indian students will keep looking abroad for global-ranked education — just like they do today.
