Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss the current state of higher education, high-impact research and university rankings in Asian emerging market-India. Firstly, overview of higher education and government schemes for academic research is presented. Secondly, progress of high-impact research in India and China for citable documents, number of citations, cites per document and H-index in three subject categories is assessed. Lastly, we discuss potential challenges in the university education and recommend policy guidelines for betterment of the existing practices. Methodology: Being a qualitative study we have collected data from archival sources and thereby accomplished our goals based on inductive and deductive logics. Findings: Overall, Chinese universities are found to be outperforming Indian universities, especially in citable documents, number of citations, international collaboration, collaborative research projects, publications and editorship, and university rankings. For citable documents in all subjects category, United States is ranked 1st, followed by China 2nd, United Kingdom 3rd …, and India 9th. We therefore suggest that individual-, university- and country-specific factors have significant impact on high-impact research. Research limitations: The study is restricted to India. Hence, conducting a survey among government and private universities with regard to academics and research assessment measures deserves future research. Practical implications: A set of policy guidelines (research funding, collaborative research projects and research assessment council) is suggested for imparting quality academic practices and standards. Originality: This paper indeed is an original attempt while no earlier study links higher education, high-impact research and university rankings in India.
