Improvements in research have seen Cambridge University and Imperial College London surpass Harvard University in the latest authoritative annual ranking of the world's top universities, published on Tuesday, with four British institutions in the top six.
The QS ranking of world universities, regarded as the most rigorous of its type, places Imperial and Cambridge as second equal, behind only the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the international stage in 2014, thanks to a year of impressive citations measured by QS's survey of academic output.
Harvard dropped from second to fourth overall. It was followed by Oxford and University College London in joint fifth place, with Stanford, Caltech, Princeton and Yale of the US filling out the rest of the top 10.
"These rankings support what our students, alumni, staff, friends and collaborators know, that Imperial is one of the world's great universities," said Professor Alice Gast, Imperial's new president of Imperial College and a leading chemical engineer. "Imperial has a rare ability to turn outstanding research into discoveries that have a real impact on the world."
• The top 200 university rankings in full
Of the top 200 higher education institutions ranked by QS, the UK is represented by 29 and the US by 51, while Germany is the next best performer with 13. London has five in QS's top 100, compared with three for Boston and Hong Kong, and two for New York, Paris and Tokyo.
Graduates of Oxford and Cambridge were rated as the world's most employable, with LSE graduates also highly regarded. Cambridge was the best performing British institution for total research citations, an area heavily dominated by the more wealthy US universities.
"This ranking, like all the others, reflects the fact that the University of Cambridge is among a small group of the most respected and influential higher education institutions in the world," a university spokesperson said.
MIT in Boston retained top spot as the world's best university for the third year in a row, helped by another impressive rise in research citations.
The strides made also meant that both Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (259th) and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (294th) are now in the Top 300. They were 269th and 355th, respectively, in the 2013 ranking of the top institutions of higher learning across the world.
The country’s premier university, Universiti Malaya, also improved upon its performance that saw it break the Top 200 barrier previously, climbing 16 places to weigh in at 151st this year.
Universiti Sains Malaysia improved by 46 places but missed out on going under the Top 300 bar, landing at 309th. It was joined in the tier by Universiti Putra Malaysia, which went to 376th from the 411-420 tier last year.
The International Islamic University of Malaysia did not better its position and remained in the 501-550 group, while Universiti Teknologi Mara went from the 701+ level to the 651-700 category.
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