The University of Cambridge has dropped out of the top 3 for the first time in a decade. Photo: Flickr

UK universities have experienced a drop in overall performance in the latest QS World University Rankings, with 38 of the 48 top 400 universities slipping.

For the first time in over a decade the University of Cambridge drops out of the top three places to 4^th place, while the University of Oxford and UCL remain strong in sixth and seventh place.

Head of Research at QS, Ben Sowter, noted that an anti-immigration climate amid Brexit and long-term concerns over funding may have had an impact on the UK’s positioning this year.

“Uncertainty over research funding, immigration rules, and the ability to hire and retain the top young talent from around the world seems to be damaging the reputation of the UK’s higher education sector,” he said.  

At the higher end of the table, US institutions have held all top three places for the first time since 2004/5 with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology scooping the top spot for the fifth year in a row.

Over in Asia, Singapore stays strong with NUS remaining the top-ranked Asian institution at 12^th and NTU at 13^th.

China is also continuing to progress. Tsinghua University rises to its highest ever position this year at 24^th, Peking University is up two places to 29^th and Fudan University jumped eight positions to 43^rd place.

It was an interesting year for South Korea, which has added three new institutions to the top 500 count, taking it to 16 universities overall.  

Australia and Canada also had a positive year. Both countries increased their count of universities in the top 200 with nine institutions each, one more than last year.

QS Top 20 Universities 2016/17

To see the results in full click here. 
 

The QS World University Rankings considered over 3,800 institutions and of these 916 were ranked. Over 74,000 academics and over 37,000 employers contributed to the rankings and 10.3 million research papers were analysed.