India’s most admired government multi-disciplinary universities 2024-25

Although the country’s new genre private universities with their sprawling capital intensive campuses, new-age study programmes, and high-quality faculty, are capturing the public imagination, government universities continue to host 74 percent of youth in higher education The latest All India Survey of Higher Education (AISHE) Report 2021-22 (released January 25) of the Union education ministry discloses that India hosts 1,168 universities. Of them, 240 are of the Central and 445 of state governments. Therefore, 40 percent of the country’s 1,168 universities are privately promoted. However, the latter mentor only 26.3 percent of the 43.3 million students in higher education. The great majority of tertiary students are enrolled in the country’s 685 government universities. This indicates that though the country’s new genre private universities are capturing the public imagination with their sprawling capital intensive campuses, new-age study programmes, and high-quality faculty including expats, government universities, which provide highly subsidised education, continue to host almost three-fourths of youth in higher education. With government varsities still dominant in Indian higher education, in 2020, the annual EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings (EWIHER), which until then rated and ranked only private universities, was expanded to also rank the best Central and state government varsities. Two years later in 2022, in keeping with our commitment to continuously improve and refine our ranking surveys, the broad category of government (and private) universities was further sub-divided according to subject specialisations, to provide level playing field comparisons. In the latest EWIHER 2024-25, government universities are ranked in nine separate silos — multidisciplinary, law and humanities, natural and life sciences (including medical), engineering and technology, all-women, agriculture, physical sciences and sports, maths and research. These subject-specialisation rankings make it easier for school-leaving students and graduates to select government varsities (whose tuition fees tend to be substantially lower) best suited to their aptitudes and aspirations. To compile the EW India Government University Rankings 2024-25, the well-reputed Bengaluru-based market research company AZ Research Partners Pvt. Ltd (estb.2002) interviewed 2,100 sample respondents comprising higher education faculty and students, and industry representatives in 22 states countrywide. These respondents were persuaded to award government universities of whom they have sufficient knowledge, perceptual scores of 1-300 on ten parameters of higher education excellence, viz, faculty competence, faculty welfare and development, research and innovation, curriculum and pedagogy, industry interface, placements, infrastructure, internationalism, leadership/governance and range and diversity of study programmes. Higher weightage is given to the critical parameters of faculty competence (150), research and innovation (300) and infrastructure (150). Within the category of government varsities, multidisciplinary institutions are more popular with students as they provide a wide range of study programmes across numerous faculties including arts, humanities, science, commerce, management, engineering and technology etc, thus offering opportunity for inter-disciplinary study. Consequently, it’s not surprising that the longest league table in EWIHER 2024-25 is of government multidisciplinary universities. And dominating this competitive league table for the third consecutive year is the University of Delhi (DU). This year’s EW sample respondents have once again voted the Central government-promoted DU…