Why Top NIRF Ranked Indian Institutions Don’t Always Shine in QS Rankings?

What is NIRF?

In 2015, the Ministry of Education, government of India launched an initiative to give rankings to the higher education institutions in the country, named as the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF). This initiative assesses and evaluates universities, engineering, medical, management colleges, and law schools in India. The NIRF ranks depend on the following parameters.

1. Teaching, Learning & Resources (TLR) – Faculty quality, infrastructure, and student–faculty ratio.

2. Research & Professional Practice (RP) – Research output, publications, patents, and projects.

3. Graduation Outcomes (GO) – Placements, higher studies, and graduation rates.

4. Outreach & Inclusivity (OI) – Student diversity by gender, region, and socio-economic background.

5. Perception (PR) – Reputation among peers, employers, and stakeholders.

On the other hand, other global systems such as QS Rankings, or Times Higher Education (THE) pay more attention to global reputation, international faculty, and research impact. NIRF focuses more on the quality of teaching, inclusivity, and the impact of local research.

Also Read: QS World University Rankings by Subject

Key Differences between NIRF and QS Rankings

Note: NIRF evaluates the performances of the Indian colleges in the country, while the QS ranks how visible and competitive they are at a global level.

Different Methodologies of NIRF vs QS

The main reason behind the gap between NIRF and QS lies in the different parameters used by these ranking systems. Here is a comparison table for both the systems.

The main focus areas of NIRF revolve around national priorities, while the main focus areas of QS revolve around global visibility, research impact, and internationalization.

QS 2025-2026 Rankings of IITs and VITs

The table below shows the QS World rankings for the top educational institutions in India for 2025 and 2026.

NIRF 2025 Rankings for Engineering (India)

Here is the NIRF 2025 rankings for the top educational institutions in India.

NIRF 2025 Ranking Vs QS 2026 Ranking

The table below shows the NIRF 2025 ranking and QS World university ranking 2026 for the top educational institutes in India.

As you can see, the NIRF 2025 rank of IIT Madras is #1, but it falls behind IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi globally as per the QS Rankings 2026. This highlights the gap between the national and global evaluation systems.

Why this gap?

Following are the main reasons for the gap between NIRF ranking and QS ranking.

1. Global Reputation – The main parameter that QS bases its evaluation are international surveys where these top Indian educational institutions lack visibility.

2. Internationalization – The number of foreign students in Indian colleges like IITs, and VIT is a worrying concern pointing towards lack of internalization and affecting QS scores.

3. Research Impact – There is no doubt that IITs are known to produce robust publications, however, citations per faculty is very low as compared to foreign universities.

4. Funding & Infrastructure – Indian education institutions also lag behind foreign universities, in terms of global collaboration and infrastructure.

How can Indian Colleges Improve their QS Rankings?

These are some ways by which Indian colleges can improve their ranking in the QS system.

• Boost Global Collaborations – The Indian colleges can collaborate more with foreign universities

• Increase International Faculty & Students – Paying more attention to conducting more exchange programs and hiring global staff is a good way to improve QS scores.

• Enhance Research Quality – They must also focus on globally-cited research to increase the impact.

• Strengthen Global Branding – Organize conferences, and academic networks for international researchers.

• Industry Integration – Concentrate on more industry-funded projects and international internships.