Continuing its domination of the world rankings, the United States has taken 13 of top 20 and 70 of top 300 places, while 14 of 19 Canadian universities have ranked lower than 2010. Germany, a recent entrant as an educational destination, has no university making it to the top 50 despite its Excellence Initiative. University of Cambridge retains its number one spot ahead of Harvard, according to the QS World University Rankings 2011. Meanwhile, MIT jumps to the third position, ahead of Yale and Oxford. In Asia, many institutions—especially those from Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, and China—have fared well at a discipline level in subject rankings produced by QS this year; this is particularly true in technical and hard science fields.

So where does India fit into the picture? While China has made it to the top 50 and the Middle East to the top 200 for the first time, no Indian university features in that range—this despite the Indian government’s efforts to bring about radical changes in the Indian higher education sector. Commenting on the participation of Indian universities, Ben Sowter, QS head of research, points out that India remains one of the most difficult places to glean good data from. He adds that greater openness and responsiveness from Indian institutions would better reflect their strengths.

According to him, “There has been no (relative) improvement from any Indian institution this year. The international higher education scene is alive with innovation and change, institutions are reforming, adapting and revolutionizing. Migration amongst international students and faculty continues to grow with little sign of slowing. Universities can no longer do the same things they have always done and expect to maintain their position in a ranking or relative performance.”

The average top 200 universities in the world have some common characteristics: about 26,000 students, 187 years old, teach both undergraduates and postgraduates, qualify as either ‘very high’ or ‘high research intensity.’

In India, Sowter adds, the majority of institutions are ‘highly specialized’ or on an entirely different scale—University of Delhi has over 145,000 students. “Also, in these changing times, when we have a great exposure to university websites, we see little or no improvement in the international projection of institutions in India online. To an untrained eye, one could be forgiven for concluding that Indian institutions are not especially interested in competing internationally,” he says.

However, the IITs could be a bright spot on an otherwise bleak scenario. Throughout the summer, QS has published rankings in 26 specific subject disciplines for the first time and the IITs have fared well in the technical disciplines ranking of relative performance.