It's not surprising that the University of Oxford would be ranked among the world's top universities: For one thing, it boasts six kings among its famous "Oxonians."

The University of Cambridge, another British institution to make the list, has had almost 800 years to hone its educational techniques. And Harvard University, which topped the list, showed its clout recently by raising a cool $2.6 billion from donors during a five-year capital campaign.

But the University of Washington?

The home to the Huskies this month snared a spot on a list of the planet's top 20 universities, as ranked by The Economist, a London-based news magazine with a circulation of about 1 million.

The Economist, which puts the UW at No. 20, relied on 2004 data from the Jiao Tong University in Shanghai. Updated data from the Shanghai university ranks the UW even higher — at No. 17.

"We are thrilled," said UW President Mark Emmert. "We've known all along that the faculty perform at that level, but it's great to see it in writing."

Emmert said the ranking might come as more of a shock to locals than to those outside the state. That's because many here remember the days in the 1960s and 1970s when UW was merely a strong regional institution.

"In the past 20 years or so it's just emerged as a research powerhouse," he said. "We need to make sure the people of the Northwest understand that as well."

The UW does not perform so highly on all lists: U.S. News & World Report, which ranks academic quality, finances and school reputation, put the UW at 45th on its list of America's best colleges for 2006.

The Economist rankings are striking in that U.S. universities hold 17 of the top 20 spots, in both the 2004 and 2005 data. Aside from Oxford and Cambridge, the only other non-U.S. school to make the lists was the University of Tokyo. The rankings focused on academic and research performance, including Nobel prizes and articles published in respected journals.

The UW counts six Nobel Prize winners among its faculty and receives the most federal research money of any public university in the country.

"The success of American higher education is not just a result of money (though that helps); it is the result of organization," The Economist stated. "American universities are much less dependent on the state than are their competitors abroad. They derive their income from a wide variety of sources, from fee-paying students to nostalgic alumni, from hard-headed businessmen to generous philanthropists.

"And they come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, from Princeton and Yale to Kalamazoo community college."

They even come in purple and gold.

Nick Perry: 206-515-5639 or nperry@seattletimes.com

Seattle Times news researcher David Turim contributed to this report.