Cambridge is the most highly regarded UK university in the world, according to new research.

The prestigious institution came third in a table ranking universities exclusively on their reputation among academics worldwide.

The UK had two institutions in the top 10 - along with Cambridge, Oxford University was placed sixth.

The United States dominated The Times Higher Education world reputation rankings, with seven institutions in the top 10.

The only other country to make the top 10, besides the US and UK, was Japan, with Tokyo University in eighth place.

The world-famous Harvard University in the US topped today's rankings, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also a US university.

In total, the US had 45 universities in the top 100, while the UK had 12 and Japan had five. These three nations were the best represented in the rankings.

Canada, Australia, Germany and the Netherlands each had four universities in the top 100.

The rankings looked at universities reputations for world-class performance in teaching and research.

It is based on a survey of 13,388 academics from 131 countries, carried out in 2010 by Ipsos Media for the Times Higher Education magazine's ranking-data supplier Thomson Reuters.

THE TOP 10 UNIVERSITIES - BY REPUTATION

1 Harvard University US

2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology US

3 University of Cambridge UK

4 University of California Berkeley US

5 Stanford University US

6 University of Oxford UK

7 Princeton University US

8 University of Tokyo Japan

9 Yale University US

10 California Institute of Technology US

(Read by Lee Hannon. Lee Hannon is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)

點擊查看更多雙語新聞

(Agencies)