Academic pecking order

Four out of ten best universities in the world are located in Britain: Cambridge, University College London, Oxford and Imperial College London, but a whopping investment at Asian higher education institutions and their improved management mean their soaring reputation in international tables. Still ranking far from the top, with the Tokyo University barely 22nd, they nonetheless tend to move up, while American universities, now well ahead of the pack, with Yale and Harvard in the top three together with Cambridge, are overall in a descending trend.