Oxford topped the World University Rankings 2023. Where else in Europe made the cut?

The University of Oxford has topped an international university league table for the seventh year in a row, while two other British universities also made the top 10.

The annual Times Higher Education (THE) world university rankings saw the United States' Harvard University retain its second position, while the University of Cambridge jumped from joint fifth last year to joint third with Stanford University.

Imperial College London in the UK moved up from 12th position last year to 10th in the latest rankings.

The US continued to dominate as the most-represented country overall, taking seven of the top 10 positions and 58 out of the top 200.

But there is a warning that Chinese universities are closing in on the US' global dominance of higher education, with the ranking revealing that the research supremacy of US universities is waning “in part because of a growing gap in output between elite universities and the rest”.

This year’s rankings include 1,799 universities across 104 countries and regions.

Fifteen European universities in total placed among the world’s top 50 institutions. They include Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (41), Belgium’s KU Leuven (42), Germany’s Heidelberg University (43), France’s Paris Sciences et Lettres – PSL Research University Paris (47) and Karolinska Institute (49) in Sweden.

The table is based on 13 performance indicators that measure an institution’s performance across four areas: teaching, research, knowledge transfer, and international outlook.

In total, three universities in the UK - Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College London - made it into the top 10.

The next best university in Europe was ETH Zurich, which tied with Columbia University in the US for joint 11th