Cambridge University climbs world rankings to number two spot

But rival Oxford holds number one for second year running.

For the first time in its 14-year history the UK is home to the top two institutions in the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings.

Cambridge University passed both the California Institute of Technology, which was number one between 2012 and 2016 and number two last year, and Stanford to take the number two spot.

The University of Oxford has held on to the number one spot for the second year in a row.

The rankings use 13 different performance indicators to measure each university’s teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, Cambridge’s vice-chancellor, said: “We welcome the fact that UK institutions feature so highly in this year’s rankings, demonstrating their continued importance to the country and its economy.”

One reason given for the movement is that Cambridge’s research income and research quality improved this year, while Caltech and Stanford were hurt by drops to their PhD-to-bachelor’s ratios. Caltech also received a much more modest rise in its research income per academic staff member compared with the other three institutions.

The US universities’ institutional income also dropped by 23 per cent and 24 per cent, respectively, while Cambridge and Oxford each received a boost in revenue (by 11 per cent and 24 per cent, respectively).

Four UK institutions – the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London and the University of Edinburgh – make the top 50 for teaching, research, citations and internationalisation.

Anglia Ruskin University sat in the 301 - 350 ranking. It was recently named by THE as the only university in the UK to be a ‘rising star’ – one of the institutions predicted to be challenging the global elite by 2030.

It is joint 39th out of all UK universities - the highest ranked of all post-92 UK universities.

Professor Iain Martin, Vice Chancellor of Anglia Ruskin University, said: “Our strong showing in the latest Times Higher Education World University Rankings is something we can all be proud of and is testament to the hard work of our staff.

“Simply being included in this list of the top 1,000 universities in the world is very pleasing but to yet again feature in the top 350 is an outstanding achievement.”