While the American universities are leading, the Asian educational institutions are bolting their way to the top as the United Kingdom universities slip in the international league table.

According to the Times Higher Education World University ranking list of the leading players at global academy for the year of 2012-13, the Asian colleges are briskly staking up with their western rivals. 

The 'rise of Asia' is steady and remarkable. These 2012-13 "World University Rankings provide hard evidence that heavy support for universities in the Asia-Pacific region is paying off - top institutions in China, Taiwan, the Republic of Korea and most notably Singapore are on the up. Make no mistake, the traditional elite are under threat," says an editorial note of the Times Higher Education.

The California Institute of Technology has retained the number one spot for the second time in the row, while, Harvard University is ranked down two spots.

However, the US universities dominated the top ten positions with seven spots. Stanford University shares the second spot with University of Oxford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology is at fifth spot, followed by Princeton University, which is at sixth, while University of California, Berkeley and University of Chicago are at ninth and tenth spot, respectively. 

In the ranking, only 10 UK Universities have been named in the top 100 colleges of Times Higher Education list, which is significantly less compared to past two years. Last year, there were 12 and in 2010, 14 UK universities were tagged amongst the top 100 colleges. 

However, University of Oxford has gone up to the second position from last year's fourth and is closely followed by Stanford University. University of Cambridge and Imperial College London are holding the seventh and eighth slot.

Meanwhile, Asian colleges are gradually making it big at the global educational platform. Four universities in Asia have been named in the top 50 colleges. Among them are University of Tokyo at the 30th position, University of Hong Kong is at 34th , National University of Singapore is holding on to the 40th spot, while Peking University is racked at 49th position.