The quality of research at Britain’s universities has been given a ringing endorsement despite a widening north-south divide in the scale of world-leading work by academics.
A big rise in the standard of academic research was found by experts in comparison with a similar exercise conducted six years ago for higher education funding bodies.
Oxford had the largest volume of highly rated research but University College London emerged in second place after a series of mergers, pushing Cambridge into third.
Edinburgh performed strongly, ranking fourth by this measure, but Manchester slipped by one place to fifth, one of several leading universities in the north and midlands to lose ground. Others included Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool and Birmingham.
Experts said that this reflected a lack of investment,