Harvard University remained the best university in the world for the tenth consecutive year when it comes to academic performance, according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities released yesterday by the Center for World-Class Universities based at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

China now has 42 universities in the top 500, overtaking the UK, which has 38 universities on the list. Among the 42 schools, 28 are based on the Chinese mainland, five spots more than last year.

However, none of the Chinese universities are ranked among the Top 100 yet. Six included in the top 200 are Peking University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, The University of Hong Kong, Tsinghua University and Zhejiang University.

In this year's list, the United States still outperformed the rest of the world, with 150 universities in total within the top 500, 53 spots in the top 100, and 17 schools included in the top 20.

The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) was began in 2003, and uses six objective indicators to rank world universities, including the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, the number of Highly Cited Researchers, the number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science, the number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index - Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index, and per capita performance. More than 1200 universities are ranked by ARWU every year and the top 500 are published in the list.

The following schools are the top 20 academic universities in the world this year:

  The University of Tokyo, Japan

 

2011 rank:21

Total score:43.8

2011 score:44.6

Founded in 1877 by the Japanese Meiji government, University of Tokyo is a research university located in the capital of the country. The university has 10 faculties with a total number of around 30,000 students, 2,100 of whom are from foreign countries. It has five campuses: Hongō, Komaba, Kashiwa, Shirokane and Nakano, and is considered to be the most prestigious university in the country.

Website:http://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/index.html