NEW DELHI: India ranks 13th in the QS Global Future Skills Index 2027 released on Tuesday, with the London-based higher education analyst saying the country has achieved “exceptional system scale” and is best placed among lower middle-income economies to accelerate AI-led growth, but warned that its results are “weak in skills alignment and consistency of quality”, which could limit its ability to translate demographic and economic strengths into a pipeline of “future-ready talent”.
QS said India’s overall score of 89.4 out of 100 places it among the world’s strongest performers in terms of readiness for the AI economy, and that the country has the ingredients to become one of the fastest growing economies over the next decade. However, the report noted that the country’s “relative weakness” remains around skills alignment, suggesting a mismatch between labor market transformation and the ability of organizations to produce AI, digital and so-called green talent at scale.
According to QS, the report is based on an index prepared on how prepared 89 countries are to harness the economic opportunities provided by AI through a talent supply and demand analysis that combines QS’s own data on higher education performance, skills gaps, and AI transformation with internationally recognized third-party indicators.
The index is based on four equal-weighted indicators, divided between talent supply and demand. The talent supply aspect includes “skills alignment,” which assesses the extent to which graduates’ skills align with employers’ expectations, and “academic readiness,” which measures the depth, quality, and orientation of a country’s higher education system toward future skills. On the talent demand side, “Future of Work” measures the extent to which a country’s labor market is prepared for artificial intelligence, digital and green transformation, while “Economic Transformation” assesses the extent to which economic conditions can transform skills into productivity, innovation and growth. Each of the four indicators is divided into 11 sub-indices.
According to the report, India ranked fifth globally on the “Future of Work” index and fourteenth on “Economic Transformation,” but lagged behind in “Skills Alignment” where it ranked eighteenth, indicating that changes in the labor market are outpacing the ability of institutions to produce graduates with artificial intelligence, digital and green skills at scale. It ranked 22nd on the “Academic Readiness” standard.
India’s large digital workforce and demographic scale give it the potential to become the world’s fastest-growing economy over the next decade, but raising the average quality of talent remains a critical challenge, said Nunzio Quacquarelli, president, QS.
“Our research suggests that the critical challenge now is to raise the average quality of talent produced by their organizations, as well as address capacity bottlenecks,” he said.
India ranked 25th in the pilot version released in 2025. However, QS said comparisons with the previous rankings would be misleading because the methodology has been significantly revised.
“The last version of the index was a pilot. Since then, the methodology has been significantly improved and expanded, including the introduction of new sub-indices. As a result, year-on-year comparisons will no longer be meaningful,” QS Communications Director Simona Bezzozero told HT.
“The elite tier of institutions — IITs, IIMs and AIIMS — are globally competitive, but the majority of Indian institutions produce graduates in bulk with much lower placement rates,” the report said, adding that the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 is “structurally sound” but its implementation remains uneven across states and types of institutions.
The report also pointed out what it described as India’s “central paradox” – that it produces the world’s largest outflow of international students while struggling to employ many graduates domestically. Transnational educational partnerships and international cooperation will be essential to expand the supply of future-ready talent, she said.
Among the South Asian countries included in the index, India topped the region. The United States topped the world rankings, followed by Australia and the United Kingdom.
