The UK holds the top two universities in the world for the first time ever in the 13-year history of the Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings.

The 2017-18 list, published on September 5^th 2017, puts the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge at number one and two respectively. Oxford has managed to hold on to its number one spot for the second year running. Meanwhile, Cambridge has overtaken both the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Stanford University to move from fourth to second.

Although the UK hold the top two places in the rankings, they only hold 12 places in the top 100, in comparison to USA’s 41.

Globally, the United States continues to dominate the rankings, but Chinese universities are rapidly climbing each year.

One of the main reasons for the shift among the top four universities is that Oxford and Cambridge have managed to register substantial increases in their total income for the year. In contrast, both Stanford and Caltech have seen big revenue falls in the same period. Cambridge also saw significant improvements in its research quality in comparison to the other top four institutions.

Although the elite British institutions either improved or remained steady across the various metrics in the rankings, some of the lower-ranked UK universities have declined – particularly in the teaching and research fields. This could be because of an increase in global competition, such as several Asian institutions consistently improving in those areas.

There are also fears that Brexit could have a profound impact on British universities’ standings in the years to come. The number of EU applicants to UK universities has already fallen by five per cent this year. In addition, top institutions such as the University of Cambridge and University of Oxford get a lot of funding from the EU, and this money could be cut significantly depending on the final Brexit deal.

Phil Baty, the Editorial Director of THE’s Global Rankings, said: “The new Times Higher Education World University Rankings serve to highlight what is at stake if we cannot agree a sustainable way to properly fund our universities, we fail to welcome global students, and if the research funding and academic talent that currently comes to us from the European Union is cut off.”

Europe has continued to perform strongly in the Rankings, despite competition from Asia.

Switzerland’s ETH Zurich has hung on to a place in the top 10 despite dropping one spot, and Trinity College Dublin has risen 14 places to 117^th.

Spain and Italy have both managed to get new number one universities as a result of big rises for Pompeu Fabra University and Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna.

China’s top two universities now outrank Germany’s top instutition LMU Munich.

Tsinghua University has also overtaken Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, and Peking University now outranks the Karolinska Institute and is level with the University of Edinburgh.

Europe now has seven institutions in the top 30 while Asia has three. Last year these figures were 10 and two respectively.

McMaster University in Canada also saw a huge jump in the Rankings, moving from 113th place to 78th.

To see the full results, click here.