‘This is the reality’: Prashant Bhushan on India’s absence in top 500 universities list

New Delhi: Senior advocate and activist Prashant Bhushan on Sunday criticised the Modi government after India failed to feature in the top 500 universities in the latest Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), also known as the Shanghai Ranking.

Sharing the ranking details on X, Bhushan wrote, “India does not have a single University among the top 500 universities in the world! This is the reality of the claim of becoming Vishwaguru!

In the Modi years, our universities have been systematically degraded by forcing them to have RSS VCs, who have destroyed critical thinking & scientific temper.”

Bhushan also posted an image of the 2025 ARWU rankings, which showed no Indian university in the global top 500. The ARWU, published annually, is one of the most widely cited global university ranking systems.

According to the 2025 ARWU rankings, the United States continues to dominate global higher education, with 111 universities featured in the top 500. Mainland China, along with Hong Kong and Macau, follows closely with a combined total of 108 institutions in the top 500. Last year, the US had 114 universities in the list, while China and its regions accounted for 98 entries.

The United Kingdom has also strengthened its presence, increasing its representation in the top 500 from 35 to 37 universities.

Harvard University retained its position as the world’s top-ranked institution, followed by Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The University of Cambridge placed fourth, while Oxford ranked sixth. Tsinghua University rose four places to 18th, remaining Asia’s highest-ranked university.