Internationalisation of higher education is the process of integration of the global dimension in all aspects of teaching, learning and research, so as to make it more inclusive geographically and culturally. This would ensure students are groomed into successful global professionals.
The National Education Policy (NEP)-2020 envisages internationalisation of Indian higher education by 2030, by facilitating the mobility of students and teachers and collaboration between Indian and globally reputed Institutions to lift the quality of education to global standards. In order to make this happen, Indian higher educational institutions must be accredited and ranked by reputed international agencies so as to attract global students, faculty, researchers and reputed Universities for collaboration.
Major international university ranking systems
There are a number of International agencies for ranking universities such as Times Higher Education (THE), Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), Shanghai Ranking Consultancy (Academic Ranking of World Universities-ARWU), US News and so on. THE and QS are more widely accepted for assessing the popularity and holistic performance of universities across the world.
Common parameters for evaluation in these two systems are academic processes and outcomes, research productivity, global engagement (of students, teachers, research network etc) and peer reputation among the institutions and employers. THE 2025 ranked about 2,000 universities in 2025 and the factors considered for evaluation include Academic Factors (14.5% weightage), Research Productivity ( 45%), International Presence ( 7.5%) and Reputation ( 33%). QS World University Rankings 2025 ranked 1,500 institutions and considered academic factors and Outcomes (15% weightage), Research Productivity (20%), Global Engagement (15%), Reputation (45%) and Sustainability (5%) . As “Reputation” contributes a large weightage in both the systems, robust processes were established by the concerned agencies to assess the same scientifically.
Participation of Indian institutions in international rankings
In the last three years, there has been an increased interest on the part of Indian HEIs to participate in international university rankings. The number of institutions that participated in THE university rankings has gone up from 101 in 2023 to 133 in 2025, a growth of about 31%. Also, the number of Institutions ranked rose from 75 in 2023 to 107 in 2025, a healthy growth of 43%. The share of ranked Indian institutions has gone up incrementally from 4.2% in 2023 to 5.1% in 2025.
It is interesting to note that the share of private universities in the ranked universities in India rose sharply from 35% in 2023 to 52% in 2025, thereby leaving the number of ranked public universities at 49 in 2023, increasing nominally to 51 in 2025. Besides, 84% of the private institutions improved their rankings in 2025 over the previous year, whereas 14% retained the same rank. In the case of only 2% of institutions, the rank dropped. In the case of public institutions, 39% improved the rank and 49% retained the same rank, whereas 12% dropped compared to the previous year.
An analysis of QS World Universities Ranking 2025 reveals that 46 Indian Institutions figured in the 1,500 ranked universities, compared with 41 in 2023. Eleven Indian institutions find their place among the top 500 universities globally.
Anna University excelled in the Citations per Faculty indicator, ranking second globally with a perfect score of 100. Just as in the case of THE-2025, the share of private institutions among the ranked Indian universities went up from 27% in 2023 to 35% in 2025, thereby leaving the number of public institutions stagnant at 30. Some 56% of the private Institutions improved their ranks and 38% retained the ranks, whereas in the case of 6%, the rank reduced. In comparison, 30% of the public institutions improved their ranks, while 67% retained and in the case of only 3%, the rank has dropped.
Twenty-eight Indian universities were ranked by both the agencies ,THE and QS in 2025, including 15 public institutions (54%) and 13 private institutions (46%). The top public institutions in this league include IISc, IIT(Indore), University of Delhi, Savitribai Phule Pune University and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). First generation IITs did not participate in the rankings. The top private institutions ranked by both the agencies include Shoolini University, Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Services , BITS (Pilani), Symbiosis International University and Manipal Academy of Higher Education.
Private institutions faring better than public ones in global rankings
The above analysis leads to an inevitable conclusion that private universities have been stealing the march in the last three years, both in terms of number of ranked institutions and improvement in rankings, despite the significant comparative advantages enjoyed by the public institutions, in terms of infrastructure as well as faculty resources. While the share of private Institutions ranked by the two agencies has gone up steeply in the last two years, number of ranked public institutions remained stagnant at 51 and 30 in THE and QS respectively, though there are 171 Institutions of National Importance ( INI) and 56 Central Universities.
As per the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) 2024 report, Research Productivity of India in 2023 was led by the 16 IITs, contributing 24.29% of total publications and 24.77% of total citations, closely followed by the 22 Deemed to be Universities (Private), contributing 23.48% of total publications and 22.19% of total citations. This vindicates the emerging dominance of Indian Private Universities in influencing global research.
How have private universities done this?
Considering that Research Productivity and International Engagement have large weightages in all international ranking systems, private institutions have been focusing on these areas in recent times.
“Research Publications” is increasingly becoming a critical parameter in performance evaluation. Many private universities have started recruiting teachers with a good track record of research publications .
In the Stanford Global Research Rankings-2025, 2% of the top scientists in the world are ranked on the basis of research productivity. Though the Institutes of National Importance have the lion’s share of top global researchers in India, the top ten private institutions that were ranked in both THE and QS-2025 increased the top 2% researchers on their rolls, from 212 in 2021 to 291 in 2023, a growth of 37%, compared with 24% in the case of the top 10 public Institutions.
Researchers are required to pay Submission Fee, also called Article Processing Charges (APC) to get their articles published in international Open Access indexed journals. This secures better readership and citations for their articles, which is given a lot of weightage in all university rankings, including NIRF. APC for good quality journals goes up to $5,000 – $8,000 per article.
As it is prohibitively high for individual faculty members, top ranked private institutions have built partnerships with reputed global publishers like Springer, Taylor and Francis, Elsevier, SAGE , IEEE etc so that the faculty members are exempted from paying APC or offered discounts on APC. These partnerships also help in enhancing research capabilities of the teachers, by way of faculty development programs and joint seminars wherein the seminar proceedings are published in indexed journals. Some of the private universities reimburse the APC to the faculty member, when the article is accepted for publication by the publisher. This encourages the faculty members to publish in reputed journals.
Some universities follow the practice of assigning less teaching load to faculty members who have a proven track record of quality publications so that they can devote more time to research. They are also sponsored to attend international conferences to present their papers. Though a number of universities have implemented monetary incentive schemes for publishing research papers, various studies have shown that non-monetary rewards and recognitions are more effective, as Quality Research is driven primarily by passion and intrinsic motivation.
International engagement
International Engagement involves international dimension with regard to the faculty, students and research network. Reputation among international academicians and employers also reflects global engagement.
In QS University rankings 2025, Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences (Deemed to be University) was ranked the highest among Indian institutes in the International Faculty Score of 87.1, with a global rank of 210. Anna University secured an impressive score of 89.2 for the International Research Network indicator, with a global rank of 181. Symbiosis International University scored the highest among the Indian institutions in the Employer Reputation indicator, ranking 31st, with a high score of 95.6.
On international students’ front, most of the Indian Institutions are ranked very low, with the highest score of 21.1 secured by Amity University. Right now, ten Indian private universities have their campuses abroad, most of them being in Dubai. Recent initiatives of IIT Madras and IIT Delhi to set up offshore campuses in Tanzania and UAE respectively will shortly open the doors to more international students in Indian Universities.
Showing the way forward
Internationalisation of higher education offers myriad opportunities to the students by fostering cross-cultural competencies and preparing them for exciting global careers. Collaborative opportunities with reputed international universities will drive India’s higher education system towards global excellence in academics as well as research.
The last few years have seen the determined efforts of top Indian universities to improve their stature among the global universities bearing fruit, despite several challenges. Continuing the momentum will help Indian HEIs achieve the NEP-2020 goal of internationalisation by 2030.
(Dr Rao is Chancellor of ICFAI University, Sikkim. Views expressed here are personal)
Published – October 30, 2024 06:30 am IST