Times Higher Education subject wise ranking 2025: IISc Bengaluru among top 100

Last year, the premiere institution’s ranking in the same subject was in the 101-125 band. In engineering subject, IISc secured the 99th spot this year, an improvement from last year’s ranking in the 101-125 band. However, its 2025 ranking in life sciences, and physical sciences subjects remains in the 201-250 band of last year.

This is the first time an Indian higher education institution – IISc – has secured a spot among the top 100 universities in the World University Ranking by subject, being released every year since 2011. In THE World University Rankings 2025 released in October last year, IISc topped the Indian universities by securing the ranking in the 251-300 band.

THE, the UK-based educational organisation, has released world university rankings 2025 in 11 subjects — arts and humanities; business and economics; computer science; education studies; engineering; law; life sciences; medical and health; physical sciences; psychology and social sciences. US universities have topped nine of the 11 subject rankings with Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford leading the way in three each. Harvard tops two of the rankings with the California Institute of Technology first for physical sciences.

THE World University Rankings by subjects 2025 has ranked more than 11,000 universities across the globe. The methodology to rank the universities by subjects includes 18 performance indicators, which are grouped into five areas: Teaching (the learning environment); Research environment (volume, income, and reputation); Research quality (citation impact, research strength, research excellence, and research influence); International outlook (staff, students and research); and Industry (income and patents).

THE’s subject rankings data shows that there is an improvement in Indian universities’ rankings in various subjects.

A maximum of 87 Indian universities have secured their spots in engineering subjects with IISc topping at 99th spot. Last year, 77 Indian institutes were on the list of top universities in engineering subject. This year, there are 53 Indian universities compared to 47 in 2024, have secured their spots in the world’s top universities offering computer science subjects with IISc securing the 96th spot.

This year, a total of 24 Indian higher educational institutions are among THE’s top universities list in business and economics subjects compared to 15 institutes in 2024. Among the top, Amity University, Noida; KIIT University, Bhubaneswar; University of Petroleum and Energy Studies (UPES), Dehradun and DU have secured their positions in 401-500 bands in business and economics subjects this year.

In arts and humanities subjects, both Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Delhi University (DU) have improved their ranking from last year’s 501-600 band to 401-500 band. For the first time, Jadavpur University with a 601 plus band ranking is also on the list of world university ranking of arts and humanities subjects. Similar to last year, 14 Indian universities have once again clinched positions among the world’s top institutions offering social sciences programs in 2025.

For the first time, India secured a position in THE’s world university rankings for education studies subject with DU securing the ranking in the 501-600 band. DU with a ranking in the 301 plus band is also the only Indian university to have secured a spot in the world’s top universities offering law subject and psychology subjects with a ranking in the 401-500 band.

Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences, Chennai with a ranking in the band of 251-300 is leading the list of 28 India-based institutions which are among the world’s top universities offering medical and health subjects.

A total of 35 Indian institutions are among THE’s 2025 list of top universities offering life sciences and 63 Indian institutions are also among the world’s top institutes offering physical sciences.

“Although no Asian universities topped any of the individual subjects, the continent’s institutions are well represented across the rankings…Asian institutions now occupy 16% of the top 750 spots – up from 9% just four years previously,” THE said in a statement.