Harvard tops world universities

The US dominated The Times Higher Education world reputation rankings, with seven institutions in the top 10.

Cambridge is the most highly- regarded UK university in the world, according to new research.

The prestigious institution came third in a table ranking universities exclusively on their reputation among academics worldwide.

The UK had two institutions in the top 10 – along with Cambridge, Oxford University was placed sixth.

The only other country to make the top 10, besides the US and UK, was Japan, with Tokyo University in eighth place.

The table is published at a time when university reputations have been placed under the spotlight.

Just last week, Sir Howard Davies, director of the London School of Economics (LSE), resigned over the university’s links to the family of Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

He said in a statement he recognised that LSE’s reputation had “suffered”, meaning he must step down.

The LSE came 37th in the list.

The world-famous Harvard University in the US topped today’s rankings, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also a US university.

In total, the US had 45 universities in the top 100, while the UK had 12 and Japan had five. These three nations were the best represented in the rankings.

Canada, Australia, Germany and The Netherlands each had four universities in the top 100. Phil Baty, editor of The Times Higher Education world university rankings, said: “In an ever more competitive global market for students, academics and university administrators, and at a time when the answers to the world’s most pressing problems will come from putting together the best brains wherever in the world they may be based, a university’s reputation for academic excellence is crucial.”

The rankings looked at universities reputations for world-class performance in teaching and research.

It is based on a survey of 13,388 academics from 131 countries, carried out in 2010 by Ipsos Media for the Times Higher Education magazine’s ranking-data supplier Thomson Reuters.

Factbox

The top 20 universities by reputation, according to the Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings. After 50th place, universities are given rankings in a group of 10, as the difference between institutions in these groups is negligible.

1 Harvard University US
2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology US
3 University of Cambridge UK
4 University of California Berkeley US
5 Stanford University US
6 University of Oxford UK
7 Princeton University US
8 University of Tokyo Japan
9 Yale University US
10 California Institute of Technology US
11 Imperial College London UK
12 University of California, Los Angeles US
13 University of Michigan US
14 Johns Hopkins University US
15 University of Chicago US
16 Cornell University US
17 University of Toronto Canada
18 Kyoto University Japan
19 University College London UK
20 University of Massachusetts US
37 London School of Economics UK
45 University of Edinburgh UK
61-70 King’s College London UK
61-70 University of Manchester UK
81-90 University of Bristol UK
81-90 University of Leeds UK
91-100 London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine UK
91-100 University of Sheffield UK