England and Japan have an equal number of institutions in the latest rankings of the top 100 universities in the world, while Israel is hot on their heels.
The Center for World University Rankings' (CWUR) annual league table, which was published on Tuesday, saw the US dominate with 57 institutions in the top 100, while England managed a meagre six - as did Japan. France followed closely with five, while Canada, Israel and Switzerland all had four of their institutions make the grade.
The CWUR's global university performance tables are the only rankings to measure the quality of education, training of students, as well as the prestige of the faculty members and the quality of their research, without relying on surveys and university data submissions. The centre, which is based in Saudi Arabia and run by Dr Nadim Mahassen, measures universities on the following:
- Quality of faculty members, measured by the number of academics who have won major international awards, prizes, and medals
- Publications, measured by the number of research papers appearing in reputable international journals
- Influence, measured by the number of research papers appearing in highly-influential journals
- Citations, measured by the number of highly-cited research papers
- Patents, measured by the number of international patent filings
- Alumni employment, measured by the number of a university's alumni who currently hold CEO positions at the world's top 2000 public companies relative to the university's size
- Quality of education, measured by the number of a university's alumni who have won major international awards, prizes, and medals relative to the university's size
Dr Mahassen told HuffPost UK: "The methodology has been enhanced greatly this year when dealing with patents count, as well as a better mathematical model to quantify both the quality of education, and the alumni employment indicator.
"Universities from Japan and Israel performed very well last year as well as this year, and there were some new entrants - such as National University of Singapore and Moscow State University.
"In the future, we hope to see more countries represented in the top 100 list of elite universities."