The Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi retained its place as India’s top-ranked university in the 2027 QS World University Rankings released on Thursday.The institute is ranked 118th globally, the highest for an Indian institution. Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay was the first Indian institute to be ranked 118th in 2025.Fifty-two Indian universities were featured in the global rankings. Of them, 26 improved their ranks, nine held their position, 15 fell and two entered the list for the first time.Seven of India’s top 10 universities were the Indian Institutes of Technology, including the top five.Eleven Indian universities were among the world’s top 100 for research impact or citations per faculty, a measure of the relative intensity and volume of research being done at an institute.The Indian Institute of Science Bangalore ranked 21st globally for citations per faculty.The Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay ranked 32nd globally for employer reputation. The metric is derived from QS’ survey of more than 69,400 employers globally who identify the universities from where they most prefer to recruit.The Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi was ranked 39th for employer reputation.‘Modest’ academic reputationHowever, the rankings, which were launched in 2004, noted that the “academic reputation” scores of Indian universities remained “modest”. The indicator measures the reputation of the universities and their programmes by asking more than 1.2 lakh academics to nominate institutes based on their subject area of expertise.The low levels of international faculty and students “suggest the system’s strengths are still under-recognised internationally,” it added.Among the 52 universities ranked, academic reputation had improved among 8% of them. It had declined for 28% of the institutes.India’s share of global research output had grown to about 5.5% of all Scopus-indexed papers. Scopus is a database of academic literature.This places India third by volume behind China and the United States.However, the QS World University Rankings noted that “volume alone does not move reputation scores”. What matters is whether that output is concentrated in high-impact journals and associated, in the minds of the international academic community, with specific Indian institutes by name, it said.Improving on the academic reputation parameter requires “more deliberate international positioning: investment in scholarly communications, faculty-exchange programmes and a sustained presence at leading global conferences,” it added.Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.