The Harvard University has retained the top spot in the annual Academic Ranking of World Universities by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. The prestigious Ivy League has held the position for the last 12 years.

The rankings are mainly based on indicators like academic quality and research performance. The Stanford University grabbed the second position, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the University of California, Berkeley; and the University of Cambridge.

Overall, the United States has dominated the Chinese world university rankings with 146 universities in the top 500, 16 in the top 20 and 52 in the top 100. Germany is right behind with 39 in top 500, Britain with 38 and China, excluding Hong Kong, with 32. South Africa and Egypt were the only countries in the African continent to be represented in the top 500.

"The continued success of the UK's leading universities, as highlighted by these rankings, will require increased investment and less regulation from government in the coming years," Wendy Piatt, director of the Russell Group, said, Times Higher Education reports.

"Other countries are pumping billions into higher education and research, particularly into their best universities - something now reflected by the rapid rise of these universities in worldwide rankings. The UK's spending is far behind that of other Western European nations, China and the USA - our public expenditure of 0.7 per cent of GDP on higher education is on a par with Chile and Slovakia."

The annual rankings has been criticised in the past for its heavy dependence on science-focused indicators like the percentage of Nobel prizes and Fields Medals' recipients, and the number of articles published in Nature and Science, University World News reports.

World's Top 10 Universities

1 Harvard University

2 Stanford University

3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

4 University of California-Berkeley

5 University of Cambridge

6 Princeton University

7 California Institute of Technology

8 Columbia University

9 University of Chicago

9 University of Oxford