India's universities lead in sustainable development: What's driving their success?

“India is a world-class country without world-class universities.” This was the stark assessment of Philip Altbach, one of the world’s leading experts on global higher education, back in 2012.

Altbach, who was at the time the director of Boston College’s prestigious Center for International Higher Education, wrote that, while India was “rushing headlong” towards economic success and modernization, with thriving high-tech industries, its “weak” higher education sector “constitutes its Achilles’ heel.”

The list of problems was long: Altbach blamed underinvestment, “bureaucratic inertia,” a lack of performance incentives for excellence and brain drain. The sector also suffered from a lack of data. “Vibrant academic systems collect data and focus analytic attention on their universities,” he wrote.

“They need good data, careful analysis and creative ideas.”

Today, there is a lot more data. Times Higher Education's data analysis shows that things are looking far more positive for many of India's universities.

Indeed, India is the world's number one best-represented nation in the 2024 edition of the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings. The impact rankings uniquely assess universities' contributions to each of the 17 United Nations' sustainable development goals (SDG), examining their teaching, research, outreach to businesses and governments, and the stewardship of their resources, such as campus estates and people, across hundreds of metrics. This provides a deep and rich database for analytic attention and global benchmarking.

India had a record of 105 universities submitting detailed data and evidence to the voluntary assessment system, designed to demonstrate social and economic impact beyond more traditional rankings of pure research and prestige, followed by Turkey with 100 and Pakistan with 96. India joined 2,152 higher education institutions from 125 countries willing to stand up and be counted for their commitment to help deliver the UN goals.

Of the Indian participants, many stand out as world-leading when scrutinized against the demanding global benchmarks—particularly in areas vital to India’s wider social and economic goals.

The data shows India demonstrating world leadership for Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7), which calls for "affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all" by 2030. Two universities made the world's top ten rankings—Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences at the 3rd and Shoolini University of Biotechnology and Management Sciences at the 5th—and no fewer than 11 positions in the world's top 100.

The Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar made the world top 60, in 59^th place, for example, thanks to an extensive energy-related research programme covering sustainable buildings, intelligent power management systems, solar energy and efficient energy storage, as well as a commitment to ensure its campus buildings are highly energy efficient.

For SDG3 (good health and well-being), India can boast the world's number one university, JSS Academy of Higher Education and Research, which earned high scores for research focused on medicine, biomedical sciences, pharmacy, and dentistry, for its flagship campus teaching hospital, and for its outreach into tribal villages to provide healthcare services. India also boasts the world's number seven-ranked institution for SDG3, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, and five world top 100 universities.

For SDG6 (clean water and sanitation), a key priority for India's development, the country has five of the world's top 50 and boasts nine of the world's top 100 universities. Similar successes can be found across the SDGs, with four of the world's top 100 universities in SDG1 (zero poverty) and five in SDG15 (life on land).

So what has changed since Altbach’ 2012 assessment?

For Alan Ruby, senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and a leading expert on globalized higher education, two particularly important reforms have strong positive prospects.

One is the long-awaited internationalization of India's higher education system. "India's internationalization efforts have tried to balance the desire to be open to the world economy with the commitment to be self-reliant and make full use of the capabilities of its people and institutions," he says. "New legal frameworks for branch campuses and international programmes are positive developments, and with education 'free zones' like GIFT city [in Gujarat], they may attract a greater international presence. But, the real potential for greater internationalization could be attracting more international faculty and strengthening cross-national partnerships based on Indian research talent.

Most important for the future, says Ruby, is the vast increase in university access for a nation with a huge and growing youth population. Total enrolments in higher education have moved from 30 million to over 43 million since 2012, with a 2 million increase just in this last year, he says.

“Aspiring for the highest possible quality for a very few is one way to build a higher education system, but vast swathes of unmet demand are not in the interests of equality, sustained economic growth and social stability,” he says.

In 2019, India launched the 2020 National Education Policy (NEP), hailed as one of the world's most ambitious education reform programmes. The NEP set out plans for a huge expansion of access to higher education, more support for university research, and greater internationalization of a largely insular sector, among other ambitions.

“There are many institutions that are reaching communities that have been excluded, underserved and marginalized and scholars who are pushing ahead,” says Ruby. He cites the former head of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Shalini Bharat, who said she and her faculty want to be “counted among those who made a difference.”

"That's the type of commitment that encourages hope for India's future as the world's largest democracy," says Ruby.

So, what does Altbach himself make of the situation – a dozen years on from his famous comment? "Back in 2012, I said that India is a world-class country without world-class universities," he says today. "Quoting Shashi Tharoor, a minister at the time of the Congress-led government, I also said that Indian higher education has pinnacles of excellence in a sea of mediocrity. These quotes are still true, but there are more pinnacles, and a few universities are climbing the world-class peak.

"The main characteristic of Indian higher education in the past several decades has been expansion, which continues today. India now has the world's second-largest higher education system after China. Much of it is of indifferent quality, but there are a growing number of institutions making a real contribution to students and society."