China’s universities could soon have the potential to rival Oxbridge and the Ivy League, according to Professor Richard Levin, President of Yale University.

Speaking at a Royal Society lecture in London on Monday, Professor Levin suggested that within 25 years Chinese universities could rank among the top ten most elite academies in the world.

Currently, British and American universities dominate the rankings, with Cambridge occupying second position behind Harvard University in the Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings. University College London, Oxford, and Imperial also feature highly, while China’s top-ranking university, Tsinghua, comes in 49th place.

However, while the higher education sector in England faces drastic governmental cuts of £449 million in the next year, China is spending billions of Yuan – at least 1.5 per cent of its gross domestic product - on university education.

Their aim remains to advance their foremost institutions into world-class establishments and, as a result, they have more than doubled the number of higher education institutions from 1, 022 to 2, 263 in the past decade.

Such investment has the ability to attract some of the top researchers in the world to China’s new “C9” group of leading universities. "In 25 years, only a generation's time, these universities could rival the Ivy League," said Professor Levin.

He added, "China and India ... seek to expand the capacity of their systems of higher education ... and aspire simultaneously to create a limited number of world-class universities to take their places among the best. This is an audacious agenda, but China, in particular, has the will and resources that make it feasible. It has built the largest higher education in the world in merely a decade."

As the total number of undergraduates in Chinese universities increases to more than five million, British and American institutions have witnessed a decline in the number of Chinese students deciding to accept offers.

Nevertheless, one Cambridge student maintains, “As more international universities increase their standards, students will no longer be restricted to attending university in their home country. Hopefully this will increase links between top universities across the world and provide a plethora of opportunity”.

Levin agrees, “I don't see the rise of Asia's universities as threatening. Competition in education is a positive sum game. Increasing the quality of education around the world translates into better informed and more productive citizens”.