India has further established its reputation as a regional education hub as QS Asia University Rankings 2025 includes 162 of its 984 ranked universities. This impressive figure even overcomes that of which China has 132 ranked universities reinforcing India’s academic stature across the region. Nevertheless, two Indian institutions have managed to break into the critically acclaimed top 50. The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi is the 44th in position while IIT Bombay closely follows at 48th. Even if these institutions find their places in the upper strata of the rankings, the positioning of Indian universities in general underscores the academic prowess of the nation but also poses the problem of why its universities are not able to compete effectively against Asian rivals like Singapore, Hong Kong, and China.
Asia is home to some of the best institutions and all have qualified in the QS Asia Rankings where many metrics like appraisals of academic work, appraisals by employers, teacher to student ratio, International collaboration in research, and citations in per paper of institutions is done. The highest-ranking positions in the 2025 ranking are occupied chiefly by institutions based in Singapore, Hong Kong and China which indicates previous academic dominance of the region.
When we look at the number of Indian Institutions in the QS Asia Rankings, we can see that aside from the fact that the country has a place in the education ranking of the continent, it also highlights the gap in quality, where the best Indian institutions are global par with others. IIT Delhi and IIT Bombay have for a number of years been in the bracket of the top twenty or thirty Asian universities, but the worrying issue is that of the Indian universities per se improving their positions by increasing research output, improving the quality of the cadre and more worrying, Internationalizing.
The fact that 161 Indian universities featured in the QS Asia Rankings, putting the country in the 36th position, highlights the significance being laid on the reorientation of India’s higher education system towards quality and efficiency improvement at all levels.
Since the momentum is being built up, expansion of the country’s education system in the subsequent years and increasing the number of institutions that will enhance the capabilities of the country as an educational superior within Asia is expectable. Even more institutions will, ladder in the rankings in the years to come thanks to the momentum that is being built now.
