Times Higher Education rankings editor Phil Baty said universities in China, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea were all making progress in reputation.

"We now have a Chinese university in the world top 20 for the first time, and another right behind it in the top 30," he said.

Other Asian universities which ranked highly in the reputation survey are the University of Tokyo at 12th, and the National University of Singapore at 26th – both well ahead of Australia's best.

The rise of Asian universities reflects the growing amount of money being invested in higher education in rich Asian countries which are particularly trying to strengthen their research efforts.

Global university reputation rankings

However, US and UK universities continued to dominate the latest survey. The top five, in order, are Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, Cambridge and Oxford.

Mr Baty acknowledged that the rise of Asia had "become something of a cliche in recent times".

"But our evidence, from six massive global surveys over six years, proves that the balance of power in higher education and research is slowly shifting from the West to the East," he said.

Paul Blackmore, professor of higher education at the Policy Institute at King's College London, says Asia's rising performance was due to a combination of "undoubted growth in university systems" and "of more being known among those giving a view".



"We've had a highly Anglo-Saxon view of higher education for many years and that can't be sustained for much longer," he said.

The reputation rankings are based on the opinions of more than 10,000 academics in 133 countries who are published scholars. They are asked to rate universities on both research and teaching quality, with research given twice the weight of teaching.

Now read about how Australia's young unis crowd world rankings.