Caltech or the California Institute of Technology emerged as the top university in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2013. This is the third consecutive year that Caltech held the top spot. Seven U.S. schools made it to the top 10 of the prestigious world university rankings.

A total of 620 academic institutions in the world were ranked based on criteria for excellence and quality of research, teaching, knowledge transfer and international outlook. The United States dominated the world rankings with 77 universities, followed by the UK with 31 universities.

The Netherlands is proud to have 12 of its top universities in the list followed by Germany with 10. In Asia, Japan had the most number of universities included in the world rankings with 5, South Korea with 4, Hongkong 3 and 2 universities each for Singapore and China.

Meanwhile, Australian universities, which did well in the 2012 THE World Universities Rankings, performed poorly in the rankings. Top Australian university, the University of Melbourne, dropped six placed to the 34th spot. The University of NSW fell out of the top 100 list to take the 114th place.

The University of Adelaide disappeared from the list after it placed 176 in the 2012 world university rankings.

Times Higher Education (THE) rankings editor Phil Baty said the performance of Australian universities were alarming due to the education budget cuts of $2.3 billion. The country has not fully felt the effects of those cuts.

Mr Baty added that Tony Abbot's win over Kevin Rudd as prime minister does not guarantee funding as a priority in the national agenda. He said it would be a "terrible blow" for Australia if it is unable to improve the value of its premier universities.

However, University of Melbourne's vice-chancellor Glyn Davis, blamed the university's poor performance on the THE than the system. The vice-chancellor said that responses in surveys may be easily affected by negative media reports about the funding cuts in Australia.

Times Higher Education has not changed its criteria for assessment. Professor Davis blamed the poor ranking of Australia's universities on public perception.