QS rankings: Why there is good news and bad news for Indian universities

Although India set a record high with 54 universities featured in the QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) World University Rankings 2026, released on Thursday (June 19), beneath this celebratory surface lies persistent structural challenges highlighted by the poor performance of Indian varsities on the parameter of ‘faculty-student ratio’ and ‘international student ratio’.

Also read: IIT Delhi highest-ranked Indian institution at 123 in QS World University rankings 2026

As India moves towards rapid expansion with a fourth undergraduate year under the National Education Policy (NEP) – starting with Delhi University (DU) this year – the faculty-student ratio is likely to decline further. Ironically, a fourth year brought in to align with the academic calendar of universities in the West could potentially be one of the reasons for the decline in the ranking of Indian universities compared to those in the West.

8 new Indian varsities in list

QS assesses universities based on various performance indicators, including academic reputation, citations per faculty, employer reputation, faculty-student ratio, research impact, international student ratio, international faculty ratio, employment outcomes and sustainability, among other things.

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Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi was the top-ranking Indian university, improving its position from 150 last year to 123 this year. India also added eight new universities to the list this year, making it the fourth most represented country after the US, UK and mainland China; and almost half of the 46 Indian universities featured in last year’s ranking improved their positions this year. According to a statement by QS, in a decade, India’s ranked universities grew from 11 to 54 — “a 390% increase, the strongest performance across the G20”.

However, the QS rankings reveal severe challenges faced by Indian public universities. Around 78 per cent of Indian universities saw a decline in the international students indicator this year, “reflecting the continuing challenge of attracting international students at scale”.

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This year, three IITs made it to the top 200. Apart from IIT Delhi, this includes IIT Bombay and IIT Madras. Apart from this, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Kanpur, IIT Guwahati, and IIT Roorkee are among the top 10 best-performing Indian institutes. Many of them have done well on the parameters of ‘academic reputation’ and ‘citations per faculty’, but none of them feature in the top 1,200 ranking for international student ratio.

Decline in faculty-student ratio

Additionally, 63 per cent of Indian universities saw a decline in the faculty-student ratio. It is telling that the O. P. Jindal Global University (JGU) – a private university – was the only Indian university to feature in the global top 350 for this parameter.

“Faculty/Student Ratio is a critical measure of academic capacity and educational quality. As Indian universities work to expand access and enrolment, the ability to scale faculty recruitment in parallel remains a persistent pressure point — particularly across the public sector, where resource constraints and regulatory frameworks can slow the pace of hiring,” QS said in a statement.

Faculty student ratio is the fourth most important parameter in terms of weightage at 10 per cent, after the academic reputation (30 per cent), citations per faculty (20 per cent), and employer reputation (15 per cent).

Yet, even the top IITs performed very poorly on this metric. Out of 100, IIT Delhi had the highest score at 21.9, followed by IIT Madras at 21.3. IIT Roorkee and IIT Guwahati performed even more abysmally at 9.5 and 10.2, respectively.

Govt institutes more affected

On international student ratio, the scores are negligible, with IIT Guwahati being the only IIT with a score (3.6) of higher than 2.

“IITs are always looking for good faculty candidates who can do quality teaching and quality research. For example, IIT Delhi has an average of 12,000-13,000 students on campus, and if we were to maintain that ratio of 1 to 10, then we would require about 1,200 to 1,300 faculty at this point. That would mean we'll have to double the faculty,” Professor Vivek Buwa, Head of the Rankings Cell and Dean of Planning at IIT Delhi, told The Federal.

“So, to have that many people, quality people, that is one (challenge), and also to have the required infrastructure to host these many faculty members. Because the moment you have faculty, you have to offer them infrastructure in terms of office space, research space and also financial support for their overall development at IIT. So, those are the challenges,” he said.

Buwa said government institutes were more affected by this as all of the above needed “sufficient financial resources”, and such constraints were not there for private universities.

IIT Madras, on the other hand, claimed that Indian universities have “a very good faculty-student ratio”.

“If you compare IITM FSR (Faculty and Staff Research) with Purdue which is ranked in top 100, their Student faculty ratio is even poor. As per NIRF (National Institutional Ranking Framework), we need one faculty for every 15 students. Most of the IITs met this ratio, if not better it (sic),” the IIT-M spokesperson said in response to a query by The Federal.

DU, which is in the top 10 best-forming Indian universities, maintained its rank at 328. However, it performed very poorly on student-faculty ratio at a score of 6.9 and international student ratio at 2.8.

“There is a lot of improvement in research, academic performance, and academic reputation, but it has not reflected in our rank. We are also studying where else we could have done better. Our international students quota is fixed. But our university is a university of the masses because we have so many students. So, international students divided by the total number of students turns out to be a loss. We are working on those parameters,” DU Vice-Chancellor Yogesh Singh told The Federal.

Asked if the fourth year would even more adversely affect the faculty-student ratio, he said, “We have our own challenges.”