Cambridge is among top UK universities that could hike fees to attract the best staff and students

Ten British universities will be charging students up to £120,000 for a degree within a decade, a leading academic has predicted.

An elite group, including Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College London could increase fees to attract the best staff and students from all over the world — and their vice-chancellors would be paid correspondingly high salaries.

Sir Anthony Seldon, vice-chancellor at Buckingham University, believes the new global elite will also include Harvard, Yale and Massachusetts Institute of Technology and emerging Chinese institutions.

“They will charge what they can afford to charge,” says Seldon, who outlines the radical forecast for the future in The Fourth Education Revolution, to be published in May. Seldon, a former public school headmaster, points out that wealthy families in the UK