Times Higher Education (THE) published the 2010-2011 world university rankings on September 16th, 2010.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/top-200.html

Acoording to the Times Higher Education's world university ranking, the top ten universities are the following list: Harvard University, California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Princeton University, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, University of California Berkeley, Imperial College London,and Yale University. The top five are all US universities, and there are three UK universities among the top ten.

The THE list shows that there are three universities from the Chinese mainland among the top 100, such as Peking University ranking the 37th, University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) ranking the 49th, and Tsinghua University ranking the 58th. And also other university in Chinese mainland, sush as Nanjing University, Sun Yat-sen University and Zhejiang University, are listed among the top 200.

By the Asian university ranking, University of Hong Kong ranks first. Altogether, the Asian university ranking TOP-10 includes five Chinese universities (including two of Hong Kong), two Japanese universities, two Korean universities and one university from Singapore among the top10 Asian university rankings.　

 THE(The Times Higher Education) and the QS (Quacquarelli Symonds, a company specializing in education and study abroad) have cooperated to issue world university rankings, which have now become one of the most influential and acknowledged ranking systems since 2004.This is the first year for a highly ambitious new rankings system, which mainly involves five standards – teaching, research, citation, industry income and international mix.　

Additionally, Times gave a special online announcement for the ranking system as the following: 

Although 2010-11 is the seventh year that Times Higher Education has published its annual rankings, these tables represent a new level of sophistication. In light of this, the top 200 list and the six subject tables we are publishing should be considered the first of a new annual series, for we have completely overhauled the methodology to deliver our most rigorous, transparent and reliable rankings tables ever. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2010-11 were developed in concert with our new rankings data provider, Thomson Reuters, with input from more than 50 leading figures in the sector from 15 countries across every continent, and through 10 months of extensive consultation. We believe we have created the gold standard in international university performance comparisons.

We are confident that the 2010-2011 world university rankings represent the most accurate picture of global higher education we have ever produced.

Our rankings of the top universities across the globe employ 13 separate performance indicators designed to capture the full range of university activities, from teaching to research to knowledge transfer. These 13 elements are brought together into five headline categories, which are: 

　Teaching — the learning environment (worth 30 per cent of the overall ranking score)
　　   Research — volume, income and reputation (worth 30 per cent)
　　   Citations — research influence (worth 32.5 per cent)
　　   Industry income — innovation (worth 2.5 per cent)
　　 International mix — staff and students (worth 5 per cent).　

The overall top 200 ranking and the six tables showing the top 50 institutions by subject were based on criteria and weightings that were carefully selected after extensive consultation. All of them drew on our exceptionally rich data set. Of course, we recognise that different people have different interests and priorities. So to allow everyone to make the most of our data and gain a personalised view of global higher education, the tables on this site can be fully manipulated and sorted. With this feature, users may rank institutions by their performance in any one of the five broad headline categories to create bespoke tables or make regional comparisons via our area analyses.

For even richer and deeper analysis of more than 400 institutions, download our Times Higher Education World University Rankings iPhone application, which allows you to create your own methodology, filter results by country and region, and match your personalised rankings against cost-of-living and tuition-fees data.

 (Edited by News Center, USTC)