China’s top universities could soon rival Oxford, Cambridge and the Ivy League, the president of Yale University has warned.

Professor Richard Levin, speaking to the Guardian on a trip to the UK, said Chinese institutions would rank in the world’s top 10 universities in 25 years’ time, squeezing out some of the west’s elite campuses.

At the moment, British universities dominate the top 10 rankings, with Cambridge coming second to Harvard, University College London fourth and Oxford and Imperial College London joint fifth. The rest of the top 15 are US universities. China’s highest-ranking institution is Tsinghua, at 49.

But the Chinese government now spends billions of yuan – at least 1.5% of its gross domestic product – on higher education with the aim of propelling its best institutions, such as the universities of Tsinghua and Peking, into the top slots, Levin said.

“In 25 years, only a generation’s time, these universities could rival the Ivy League,” said Levin, the Ivy League’s longest-tenured president. He was speaking before giving a lecture on the rise of Asia’s universities to the Royal Society in London on Monday evening.

Levin said: “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 sector in the world in merely a decade.”

China has more than doubled the number of its higher education institutions in the last decade from 1,022 to 2,263. More than 5 million Chinese students enrol on degree courses now, compared to 1 million in 1997.

Chinese scholars are increasingly leaving their posts in US and UK universities to return home, Levin said.

The growth of Chinese higher education comes as English university leaders fear they may not be able to maintain their world-class reputation for higher education, with savage government cuts of 950m pounds over the next three years.

Commenting on the cuts, Levin said it would be “a shame if the British government didn’t recognise the status of Oxford and Cambridge as global leaders”.

He pointed out that it had taken centuries for Harvard and Yale to match Oxford and Cambridge. And while China had a large pool of talent to draw on, it was currently seen as less attractive to scholars from across the world than the US and the UK, he said. China’s universities lack “multidisciplinary breadth” and “the cultivation of critical thinking”.

Levin said: “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.”

中文

耶鲁大学校长提醒道，中国的顶尖学府很快就会追上牛津剑桥和长春藤联盟。
理查德•利文教授在去英国的途中跟《卫报》谈到，中国的大学会在25年内跻身世界前10，而西方一些精英学校会被挤下来。
目前，英国的大学在前10排名中佳绩屡创。有剑桥大学排名第二，仅次于哈佛，伦敦大学第四，牛津和帝国伦敦大学并列第五。其余的前15都是美国的大学。中国排名最高的是清华大学，位于49名。
然而，中国政府现在在高等教育上投资占国内生产总值1.5%的巨款，为了提升像清华北大那样的著名学府的世界排名。
作为长春藤联盟任期最长的校长，利文说道：“只需25年，一代人的时间，这些学校可以超越长春藤。”
他说：“中国和印度……进行大学扩招……同时把大学挤进世界前列。这是大胆的计划，但是中国有这个决心和资源去实现。在过去不到10年的时间内，中国已经建立起了世界上最大的教育部门。”
在过去的10年，中国高等学府的数目从1022所增长到2263所。超过500万的学生能攻读学位，在1997年人数才达100万。
利文提到，越来越多的中国学者放弃英美大学提供的职位选择回国。
中国高等教育的发展，加上自己政府在过去的三年减少了9亿5000万英镑的教育拨款，英国的大学领导人开始担心他们的大学难以维持其世界声誉。
在谈到教育裁款时，利文说“如果英国政府没有意识到剑桥牛津现在的世界地位的话，这会很糟糕。”
他指出，哈佛跟耶鲁用了一个多世纪去追上牛津剑桥。虽然中国有很多人才，但是相对于英美的学校，中国的大学现在还是缺乏吸引国际人才的魅力。中国的大学缺乏“跨学科的广度”和“批判性思维的培养”。
利文说：“我不觉得亚洲大学的崛起是一种威胁。教育机构之间的竞争是一件好事。提高全球的教育质量有利于培养更有常识和更具创造力的公民。”

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China’s top universities will rival Oxbridge, says Yale president | Education | The Guardian.