The University of Cambridge has emerged as the fourth best university in the world according to the new 2016 Times Higher Education World University Rankings.

The result represents a one place rise for Cambridge after it placed fifth globally in last year’s rankings, though the University maintains its place as the second-highest ranked British institution after the University of Oxford. 

The new rankings mean that Cambridge has continued to rise in THE’s estimations for the second year running, after placing seventh in both the 2013 and 2014 standings.

Worldwide, Cambridge was surpassed only by the California Institute of Technology (who extend their run at the top of the rankings to five years), second-placed Oxford and third-placed Stanford.

Oxbridge lead a cohort of 78 UK universities inside the top 800 – a number exceeded only by the United States, which boasts 147 of the top 800.

Of those 78, 34 ranked with the top 200, leading THE World University Rankings editor Phil Baty to call the UK a “stand out performer”. 

The rankings are determined according to the average score of institutions across five areas, the three most weighted areas being teaching, research and citations, all of which have a 30% weighting in the final score.

While there was little to split Oxbridge and the two top-four Californian institutions in terms of research and citations, both Oxford and Cambridge lagged noticeably behind in teaching, scoring 86.5 and 88.2 respectively.

Cambridge also finds itself in the position, unique among the world’s five elite universities, of being outside the top 20% of institutions in terms of what THE call “industry income”, a measure of “the extent to which businesses are willing to pay for research and a university’s ability to attract funding in the commercial marketplace”.