The Shanghai Jiao Tong University has released its annual ranking of the world's top 500 colleges and universities, with Oulu University at 479.

Top of the list is Harvard in the United States, with Cambridge in the United Kingdom second and Stanford (U.S.) third. The Swedish "Karolinska Institutet" has the highest Nordic entry at 48.

Of five Finnish universities on the Academic Ranking of World Universities list, Helsinki is highest at 74, then Turku (#291), the Helsinki University of Technology (#447), Jyväskylä (#469), and Oulu (#479). Finland's rankings are identical to those published last year.

Jiao Tong has also published a list of the top one hundred European universities. Two Finnish universities made it: Helsinki at 23 and Turku in the last group (79-122).

The Shanghai ranking has been criticised by The Times Higher Education Supplement, a competitor, for bias towards maths, science, and Nobel, and for crediting universities where prize-winners studied as far back as the 18th century, or where they carried out research 20 years previously, rather than at their current resident institute.

Ranking the 200 top universities, the Times supplement lists the top three for 2006 as Harvard, Cambridge, and Oxford, with Helsinki ranked at 116 for 2006, and 62 for 2005.