University students walk on the campus of University of Sydney following a graduation ceremony in Sydney, Australia, April 22, 2016.
University students walk on the campus of University of Sydney following a graduation ceremony in Sydney, Australia, April 22, 2016. Reuters/Jason Reed

Australian universities have fallen from their places at the latest World’s Most Prestigious Universities 2016 ranking. Only three schools from the country made it to the top 100 list, which is dominated by US and UK universities.

The list, conducted by Times Higher Education, is based on a survey of more than 10,000 top scholars from around the world. Each of them was asked to name up to 15 universities they believe should be included based on research and teaching in their discipline. The votes for schools based on research prowess were given twice the weight of those for teaching.

For 2016, only University of Melbourne, Australian National University and University of Sydney have made it to the list, and all of the three managed to slip from their previous ranking in 2015.

University of Melbourne is at equal 49th place, down from last year’s 41st. ANU and University of Sydney, meanwhile, are at the 61-70 range, a slip down from their 51-60 range last year.

The University of Queensland and Monash University were included in the top 100 in 2015, but they failed to land a place this year.

While the top 10 is dominated by American and British institutions, it’s Asia that has increased its share of schools in this year’s global ranking of the world’s most prestigious universities. It has 18 schools in the list, up from 10 in 2015.

Japan’s University of Tokyo is at the highest at 12th place, while China’s Tsinghua University and Peking University jumped several places at 18th and 21st respectively. The National University of Singapore follows the Asian schools at 26th place, then by Kyoto University of Japan at 27th.

The continent’s increasing strong performance in the list is in contrast to Europe’s, where many of its institutions have fallen from their ranks. The UK is the most represented nation in Europe, with 10 universities, though both its schools in the top 10 – the University of Cambridge at 4th and the University of Oxford at 5h – have slipped from its 2nd and 3rd place respectively from 2015.

The US remains the country in the world with the most representatives. It has 43 institutions in the list, with eight of them in the top 10.

Top 10 of the world’s most prestigious universities of 2016:

  1. Harvard University (US)
  2. Massachusetts Institutes of Technology (US)
  3. Stanford University (US)
  4. University of Cambridge (UK)
  5. University of Oxford (UK)
  6. University of California, Berkeley (US)
  7. Princeton University (US)
  8. Yale University (US)
  9. Columbia University (US)
  10. California Institute of Technology (US)