Both Cambridge and Harvard have earned lots of Nobel prizes, have given the higher education to many famous people among whom are poets, scientists, philosophers and other eminent personalities. But today Cambridge ousts Harvard, taking the first place in a league table of the world's top universities. University College London, Oxford and Imperial have appeared in the top while 10 King's College London and Edinburgh appeared only in the top 25.
In the QS world university rankings, which is based on measures of the quality of research, teaching as well as employability for graduates and the international ties, American universities have the majority of places with the list of 31 institutions out of the top 100. Asian institutions were also featured in the list, namely 15 of them. This year Harvard was popular among the 5,000 employers worldwide.
Professor Steve Young from the University of Cambridge expressed the idea in his custom essay: "While university league tables tend to over-simplify the range of achievements at institutions, it is particularly pleasing to note that the excellence of the transformative research – research that changes people's lives – carried out at Cambridge is so well regarded by fellow academics worldwide."
According to John O'Leary, executive member of the QS academic advisory board, Cambridge and Harvard are popular because English is the language of academia. He said: "In general terms, UK universities, like American ones, benefit from being English-speaking. If you're publishing in a language most researchers aren't using, you're not going to be picked up and cited ... in the mainstream journals."
However, the findings of the investigation carried out by OECD have shown that the UK universities are behind its competitors in public investment in higher education. According to the report, Canada and Japan were very popular among young pupils this year.
