Harvard still TOP

Harvard retains the crown as top university for the eighth year in an annual ranking of the world's universities which is dominated by the United States but shows China's performance improving.

The 2010 Academic Ranking of World Universities ( ARWU), published since 2003 by the Center for World-Class Universities of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, said the United States dominates the list with eight in the top 10 and 54 in the top 100.

Joining Harvard in the top 10 were the University of California, Berkeley; Stanford; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; California Institute of Technology; Princeton; Columbia and Chicago. Yale came 11th.

The best ranked British universities were Cambridge, slipping to fifth place from fourth last year, and Oxford retaining the 10th position.

But the ranking showed that Asian universities were advancing up the list with 106 from the Asia Pacific region making it to the top 500 and Chinese universities performing better.

"The number of top 500 Chinese universities reaches 34 in 2010, which is more than double that in 2004 (16)," Shanghai Jiao Tong University said in a statement.