QS World University Rankings 2026: Why India’s IITs and IIMs soar while DU and JNU stumble

IITs versus DU/JNU

QS data shows that, in the ‘Engineering & Technology’ broad subject area, India is a formidable player, with IIT Delhi at the 36th position, IIT Bombay at 42nd, IIT Madras at 62nd, and IIT Kharagpur at 64th. But shift the focus to the ‘Arts & Humanities’ broad subject area, and the landscape changes, with India’s best – the University of Delhi (DU) – not appearing until 231st.

This implies that while the world views an Indian engineering degree as gold standard, it views our philosophy, history, and literature departments as largely invisible. Even JNU, the bastion of Indian intellectualism, trails at 260th. Compare that to the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, which was at the 45th position in the ‘Pharmacy & Pharmacology’ narrow subject area.

IIMs versus Ashoka/JGU

Shift the focus to the ‘Business & Management Studies’ narrow subject area, and you will find IIM Ahmedabad at 21st position, IIM Bangalore at 29th, IIM Calcutta at 47th, IIM Lucknow at 75th, and IIM Kozhikode at 78th. But our new-age liberal arts centres don’t appear until the 323rd rank (OP Jindal Global University in ‘Arts & Humanities’), although we’ve to give it to JGU that, in the ‘Politics’ narrow subject area, it ranks 90th best in the world.

Ashoka University, on the other hand, is difficult to find in the entire rankings – and possibly the only mention of it is in the 551-700 band in the ‘Economics & Econometrics’ subject area.

Why the difference?

Evaluating this systemic divide, Avantika Tomar, partner, Education, EY-Parthenon India, points to severe structural constraints within our legacy institutions. “The biggest gap is in global research impact. Indian universities rank poorly on citations, h-index, and international research networks that are heavily weighted in QS and THE. For instance, citation rank positions are typically in the 500-1,300 range, far behind top global institutions,” she said. “Indian universities have low levels of foreign faculty, international students, and cross-border research collaboration, which reduces both visibility and the likelihood of producing highly-cited work.”

This lack of global integration feeds directly into a deficit of brand recall. Tomar added that rankings are heavily driven by global reputation, and this is where Indian humanities institutions struggle. “Academic surveys form a large part of QS and THE scores, and universities like DU and JNU do not have strong recall among global scholars. The underlying issue is a weak research ecosystem.

Scores on research environment and teaching are consistently low (research environment 7-26, teaching 10-37, out of 100), pointing to constraints like limited funding, high teaching loads, and insufficient faculty depth.”

As a result, no Indian university breaks into the top-200 globally in humanities. Most are clustered much lower, in the 300-800 range and that too in the narrow subject areas – University of Calcutta at 351-400 in ‘Mathematics’, Banaras Hindu University at 51-100 in ‘Library & Information Management’, and University of Mumbai at 751-850 in ‘Computer Science & Information Systems’, and these are over a century-old universities.

STEM and prestige

There is a curious case of crossover effect as well. For example, IIT Bombay appears at 345th in ‘Arts & Humanities’, and while it’s lower than DU or JNU, the fact that a technical institute is even appearing in this bracket – and outperforming liberal arts centres like Ashoka and JGU – is telling.

A former IIT director told this newspaper that this suggests two things. “First, the global brand equity of the ‘IIT’ tag is so strong that it spills over into non-core subjects. Second, technical institutes have mastered the art of ‘data-capturing’ that global rankings demand,” he said. “They have the administrative machinery to track citations, international collaborations, and faculty-student ratios – metrics that legacy public universities like DU or JNU often struggle to document due to sheer scale and bureaucratic inertia.”

But what DU and JNU lack, JGU possibly is trying to master. Built on high-capital, global-first model, JGU is speaking the language of international rankings, and apart from the 323rd rank in ‘Arts & Humanities’, it also ranked 232nd in the ‘Social Sciences & Management’ broad subject area.

Are rankings sacrosanct?

A lower ranking doesn’t always mean institutional failure. Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar, chairman, Review Committee for NEP 2020, Ministry of Education, and former chairman, UGC, argues that global parameters are fundamentally misaligned with the core output of non-Western humanities.

“It is encouraging that India’s technical institutions are increasingly visible in global ranking systems. But it would be a mistake to infer that Indian arts & humanities institutions are lagging in contribution. Technical fields align tightly with QS indicators (academic reputation, employer reputation, citations, h-index, global networks). On the other hand, arts & humanities generate large amounts of output of national and civilisational value. But the one-fits-all models used by ranking systems under-measure such output (books cited over decades; influence through curriculum, public discourse, legal reasoning, and translation).”

This inherent metric bias becomes even more pronounced when accounting for India’s vast, non-English intellectual heritage. “Unfortunately, non-English-language scholarship in arts & humanities can be disadvantaged because global ranking models often privilege English and certain publishing formats,” he said. “It matters because arts & humanities output in India is interlinked with local languages, culture, archives, and publics – valuable for us, but least legible to global bibliometric pipelines.”

The reality is not that Indian arts & humanities institutions are weaker, but global ranking systems must evolve. “We must insist on the need to use ranking models that recognise the full diversity of scholarly impact,” Kumar said.

India’s soft power

Education analysts pointed out that as India seeks to project ‘soft power’ globally, the reliance shouldn’t be only on IITs/IIMs. “While we are producing world-class engineers who build global systems, and world-class managers who run global companies, it’s time we also produce thinkers and historians who define the global discourse,” they said. “We are flying high in STEM, but there’s no reason we should be grounded in arts.”