<p>Recent trends have seen a shift in research output of universities across the world, with institutions in China surging ahead of those in the United States and other countries, especially in some frontier areas of science and technology. Global university rankings, which are revised and updated every year, have noted this trend. </p><p>The US universities have always led the world in research and innovation. Almost all the pioneering discoveries and inventions of the past many decades have come from the US. Harvard has an iconic status as the origin of many innovations, but its position is now being challenged by Chinese universities. According to Leiden rankings, which rank universities based on research output, quality, and impact, Harvard has now been pushed to third place, and the first two positions have gone to Chinese universities: Zhejiang University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. </p><p>Except for the third spot, most of the remaining nine positions are held by Chinese universities in the top 10. Six major US universities that ranked in the top 10 are no longer even in the top 15.</p>.NIRF rankings 2025: IIT Madras tops list of colleges, IISC Bengaluru adjudged best university.<p>The shift in rankings has happened more because Chinese universities have improved their positions than because the US universities have declined. Chinese universities have tremendously increased their research output, and the number of peer-reviewed papers in international journals. That has boosted their rankings. Harvard is still doing high-quality research. It is a pioneer in innovation, and has top-quality faculty. Other leading US universities have also maintained their standards. But all of them are facing stiffer competition from China. </p><p>Chinese universities are producing more scientific papers annually than their US counterparts. As a result, the relative positions are changing. The Times Higher Education, an agency that ranks universities, has noted that ‘there is a big shift coming, a bit of a new world order in global dominance of higher education and research.’ Leiden has started producing another ranking system based on a different academic database. Harvard is No 1 in that ranking, but 12 of the next 13 schools are Chinese.</p>.<p>China has worked to a plan and invested billions in higher education and research. Special attention has been paid to fields such as artificial intelligence, engineering, renewable energy, materials science, and medicine. Universities have close links with industry and research institutes. While a large part of the research in the US is done by students from other countries, most of the students and faculty in China are from China only. India has lessons to learn from the shifting academic and research power in the world. It is nowhere in the global picture, and must start somewhere.</p>
<p>Recent trends have seen a shift in research output of universities across the world, with institutions in China surging ahead of those in the United States and other countries, especially in some frontier areas of science and technology. Global university rankings, which are revised and updated every year, have noted this trend. </p><p>The US universities have always led the world in research and innovation. Almost all the pioneering discoveries and inventions of the past many decades have come from the US. Harvard has an iconic status as the origin of many innovations, but its position is now being challenged by Chinese universities. According to Leiden rankings, which rank universities based on research output, quality, and impact, Harvard has now been pushed to third place, and the first two positions have gone to Chinese universities: Zhejiang University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. </p><p>Except for the third spot, most of the remaining nine positions are held by Chinese universities in the top 10. Six major US universities that ranked in the top 10 are no longer even in the top 15.</p>.NIRF rankings 2025: IIT Madras tops list of colleges, IISC Bengaluru adjudged best university.<p>The shift in rankings has happened more because Chinese universities have improved their positions than because the US universities have declined. Chinese universities have tremendously increased their research output, and the number of peer-reviewed papers in international journals. That has boosted their rankings. Harvard is still doing high-quality research. It is a pioneer in innovation, and has top-quality faculty. Other leading US universities have also maintained their standards. But all of them are facing stiffer competition from China. </p><p>Chinese universities are producing more scientific papers annually than their US counterparts. As a result, the relative positions are changing. The Times Higher Education, an agency that ranks universities, has noted that ‘there is a big shift coming, a bit of a new world order in global dominance of higher education and research.’ Leiden has started producing another ranking system based on a different academic database. Harvard is No 1 in that ranking, but 12 of the next 13 schools are Chinese.</p>.<p>China has worked to a plan and invested billions in higher education and research. Special attention has been paid to fields such as artificial intelligence, engineering, renewable energy, materials science, and medicine. Universities have close links with industry and research institutes. While a large part of the research in the US is done by students from other countries, most of the students and faculty in China are from China only. India has lessons to learn from the shifting academic and research power in the world. It is nowhere in the global picture, and must start somewhere.</p>
