The Times Higher Education Supplement has announced its annual league table of top universities. They have good news for London. UCL is listed at number nine, making its debut in the top ten and climbing from 25th last year. Imperial, despite constitutional upheavals this year, takes fifth spot. On the national scale, British universities comprise 19 of the top 100.

The table takes into account the opinions of thousands of researchers and graduate employers. As with any survey based largely on opinion, the methodology and results are open to debate, as argued recently in BMC Medicine.

Top rankings

1 Harvard University

2 University of Cambridge

=2 University of Oxford

=2 Yale University

5 Imperial College London

6 Princeton University

7 California Institute of Technology

=7 University of Chicago

9 University College London

10 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

…

24 King’s college London