Indian varsities may soon match Oxbridge, says US expert

Amidst major funding cuts in British universities, a top US academic has told a London audience that India and China could soon build institutions that match Oxford and Cambridge.

Amidst major funding cuts in British universities, a top US academic has told a London audience that India and China could soon build institutions that match Oxford and Cambridge.

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Professor Richard Levin, president of Yale University, said increasing focus in India and China on higher education means that institutions there would be ranked alongside Oxbridge within 25 years.

At a recent event at the London School of Economic (LSE), Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries, wondered why Indian universities did not figure in the top 100 in the world and called for achieving such an objective within the next 10 years.

"In 25 years, only a generation's time, these universities (in Asia) could rival the Ivy League. 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," Prof Levin told The Guardian.

"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."