U.S. leads the way with 43 colleges ranked among the world's elite universities

U.S. leads the way with 43 colleges ranked among the world's elite universities, as Harvard takes the number one spot again

• U.S. institutions dominate the list of world's best universities leaving other countries trailing far behind in terms of numbers
• Harvard takes the top spot for the fifth year running
• Oxford and Cambridge are the only non-American universities in top ten
• The top 20 is rounded out by universities from Japan, Switzerland and Canada joining those from the U.S. and U.K. 

Harvard has once again been named the world's top university, beating Cambridge and Oxford in the Times Higher Education Reputation Rankings.

This is the fifth year in a row that Harvard has ranked number one. 

The U.S. has 43 colleges in the list of the top 100 universities in the world it has been revealed, far outstripping the U.K. with 12, and Germany with six.

American institutions take up eight of the top ten positions, with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford rounding out the top five. 

University of California at Berkeley, Princeton, Yale, California Institute of Technology and Columbia rank six to ten respectively.

The results show that for the fifth year in a row there is an elite group of six US and UK ‘super brands’, the authors suggested, which are ‘head and shoulders above the rest’.

While Harvard took first place again, Cambridge moved up from fourth, and Oxford, rose from fifth to third.

M.I.T. was down two on last year to fourth place, while Stanford fell two places to fifth and University of California, Berkeley remained in sixth.

Columbia steps into the top ten displacing University of California, Los Angeles, which slipped to 13th position.

Other American universities that just missed out on a place in the top 10 are the University of Chicago (11), John Hopkins University (18), University of Michigan (19) and Cornell University (20).

Overall, the U.S. remains dominant with 43 top 100 places, compared with 46 last year.

The U.K. with 12 representatives, up from 10 in 2014, has had a strong year and remains firmly entrenched as the world number two when it comes to global university brands. 

Aside from Oxford and Cambridge, other U.K. universities in the top 100 include Imperial College London, which falls one place to 14th, University College London, which is up eight places to 17th, and the London School of Economics and Political Science which has moved from 24th to 22nd.

Across the world, London and Paris have the highest number of prestigious universities in the world. Each have five universities in the top 100.

There has also been a marked improvement by universities in Brazil, Russia and China, and a continued solid performance from academic institutions across Europe, as well as in Canada, Australia, and across Asia.

The rankings are based on a survey of about 10,000 academics in 142 countries.

They were asked to nominate up to ten of the best institutions in the world for teaching and research.

Responses were collected between November 2014 and January 2015.

Harvard has ranked number one for each of the five years that the survey has been conducted.

The oldest academic institute in the U.S., dating from 1636, the school is named after its first benefactor, John Harvard.

It has the global academy's largest financial endowment and boasts more than 40 Nobel laureates.