Global university ranking for graduates, not research I work at a university that gives a small number of scholarships to PhD students to pay their fees and tuition.  Currently, the decision for who to give these to is based on their undergraduate transcript and the global ranking of the university they attended as an undergraduate.   If you don't get a scholarship, you have to pay full fees and tuition.

Unfortunately, one consequence of this system is that graduates from certain countries, for example India, are grossly disadvantaged.  The highest ranked Indian university is ranked below 250 in the main international tables (and below 400 in Excellence at http://www.webometrics.info/en/Asia/India?sort=asc&amp;order=Excellence%20Rank*) . As far as I can tell, this is mostly because the ranking measures research output and many of the top Indian students go on to graduate school in the US.

Now we can all say how ridiculous it is to be doing this in the first place but that isn't going be helpful. I feel that in order to help address this question I need to give them an easy alternative.

Are there any more relevant league tables that might measure the quality of graduates on a fairer global basis, rather than the quality of research output from the relevant department?
It is not clear what rankings your university uses or what you think is a fairer ranking. The QS World University Rankings ranks on:

Academic reputation (40%)
Employer reputation (10%)
Student-to-faculty ratio (20%)
Citations per faculty (20%)
International faculty ratio (5%)
International student ratio (5%)

I would think that &quot;research output&quot;, whatever that is, would impact both academic reputation and citations per faculty. I am not sure if any of the other factors are fairer for judging academic success, but the nice thing about the QS rankings is you can sort based on any of their factors.
If we look at a couple of the IITs
                 Overall     Academic     Employer     SFR     CPF     IFR     ISR
IIT Bombay         222         160          60         400+    301     400+    400+
IIT Delhi          235         199          90         393     329     400+    400+
IIT Kanpur         300         229          229        400+    345     400+    400+

Despite any impact of loss of PhD students to international schools, the &quot;Academic Reputation&quot; is still helping the ranking. The Citations per Faculty are hurting them a little, but they are most hurt by a lack of international draw at the faculty and student levels and a high Student to Faculty ratio.