No Indian varsities, including the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology, figure among world's top 200 universities this year while six Chinese universities were listed, signalling the rapid stride the Communist giant is making in higher education.

Harvard University tops the league table followed by Cambridge and Oxford at second and third positions respectively. The top 10 universities are all either in the United States or the United Kingdom, a survey has found.

Besides China, other Asian countries figuring in the list of world-class universities are Japan [Images], Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea.

The IITs, which figured regularly in all the previous surveys, since The Times Higher - Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings began three years ago, have fallen off the map this year partly because of a change in evaluation norms.

For this year's survey, individual IITs were assessed, and not the "IIT system as a whole." And none of the seven IITs was considered good enough to find a place among the top ranking world universities, according to the survey.

However, IIT Delhi and IIT Mumbai find mention among the world's top 50 technology institutions, with the former at 37 and latter at 33 -- both way behind China's Tsinghua University, placed at 16.

The six Chinese universities included among the world's top 200 are Peking University, Tsinghua University (also listed among the 50 best technology institutions), Fudan University, Nanjing University, the University of Science and Technology of China and Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

The survey covering 28 countries, confirms the English-speaking world's dominance in higher education with America and Britain leading the pack.