European and American universities dominate the 2024 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), with Harvard University once again taking the top spot.
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Universities from the UK, Germany, France and Switzerland have been named among the world's best universities, according to the newly published Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) 2024 edition.
Harvard University in Cambridge, USA, took the top spot for the 22nd consecutive year.
Following this, two American universities, Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), rounded out the top three.
The UK's University of Cambridge came in fourth place, making it the highest-ranked university in Europe.
Fellow UK-based University of Oxford ranked sixth, making it only the second European university to feature in the top ten.
The remaining rankings are taken up by US universities, with the US taking eight of the top ten spots.
How the rankings are determined
Published by Shanghai Ranking Consultants, ARWU assesses several academic and research performance indicators to determine university rankings.
These include achievements such as alumni receiving prestigious awards such as the Nobel Prize and the Fields Medal to recognise the quality of their teaching, and similarly awards received by staff to recognise the quality of the teaching staff at the institution.
Additional criteria include the number of highly cited researchers (HiCi), the number of papers published in top journals such as Nature and Science (N&S), the number of papers indexed in major citation databases (PUB), and the institution's per capita scholarly output (PCP).
Here is an overview of this year's top 10 universities, based on their performance index scores.
Top European Universities
In addition to British universities such as Oxford and Cambridge making the top 10, other European universities also made it into the top 50.
This was followed by France's Paris-Saclay University, which rose three places from last year to come in at 12th place.
Next is Switzerland's ETH Zurich in 21st place globally, followed by Imperial College London in 25th place and the University of Copenhagen in 32nd place.
In terms of representation, the United States and China had the most institutions ranked in the top 100, with 38 and 14 respectively.
In Europe, the UK had the most universities in the top 100 with eight, followed by Switzerland, Germany and France.
Three German universities made it into the top 50 for the first time: the University of Munich (43rd), the Technical University of Munich (47th), and the University of Heidelberg (50th).
French universities also showed an increase in competitiveness, with Paris-Saclay (12th), PSL (33rd) and Sorbonne (41st) all ranking in the top 50.
Although some European countries such as Italy, Spain, Austria and Portugal are not in the top 100 rankings, there are still several countries in the top 500.
