The Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings 2017 are based on the world’s largest invitation-only opinion survey of leading academics. It asks scholars to name no more than 15 universities that they believe are the best for research and teaching, based on their own experience.

The result is a list of the top 100 most powerful global university brands as judged by those best-placed to know the most about excellence in higher education.

The survey data will be used alongside 11 objective indicators to help create the THE World University Rankings 2017-18, which will be unveiled in September 2017.

Harvard University tops this year’s list of the world’s most prestigious universities for the seventh year in a row.

But, while North America continues to dominate the table, several of the region's most reputable institutions have been outshone by leading Asian brands for the first time. China’s Tsinghua University and Peking University both leapfrogged the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell University in the table this year while the University of Tokyo now has a stronger reputation than Columbia University. Meanwhile, Seoul National University is now considered more prestigious than the University of California, Davis.

Leading universities in Belgium, Germany, France and the Netherlands have also lost ground as universities in Asia have become more prominent brands on the global stage.

Overall, 19 countries across Europe, Australasia, Asia, North America and Latin America are represented in the seventh annual edition of the table.