Oxford Brookes has made it into the top 50 in The Times ' league table of universities.

Oxford University regained second place after two years of trailing Imperial College, London. Cambridge University is first again this year.

The Lord Mayor of Oxford, Maureen Christian, said: "We should congratulate Oxford Brookes. This is a wonderful achievement. We now have two first-class universities in the first 50 places. It will mean that more people will want to come to Oxford. This is another top accolade."

The 97 British universities on the list are judged on their teaching, research, entry grades, staffing, spending on library and computing equipment, spending on facilities, classes of the degrees they awards, graduate destinations and completion.

Oxford Brookes has overtaken nine of the "old universities" to take 48th place.

It is the first new university to break into the top half of the Good University Guide and this is the sixth year running it has been the highest ranked new university.

Oxford Brookes - formerly Oxford Polytechnic - employs 2,000 people and has 15,000 students. It pioneered the modular teaching system 20 years ago and today offers more than 2,000 modules.

Vice Chancellor Prof Graham Upton said: "This is a huge vote of confidence for Brookes and bears witness in particular to the excellent quality of teaching and the success of our graduates in the job market."

A spokesman for Oxford University said: "We are pleased that Oxford University remains among the top universities in this country. However, league tables can only ever provide a snapshot of how a university is performing, and we would urge potential students to look at our website and our prospectus to get a better picture."