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So what conclusions can we draw from this latest university league table? Should we celebrate the fact that four of the top 10 universities in the world are British? Or should we focus on the disappointing statistic that most UK institutions have slid down the world rankings?

The first question, of course, is the question we should ask of any league table: does it mean anything? Each university in this table has been assessed in terms of, first, statistical data on how often work done by its academics has been cited by other academics; on its academic staff/student ratio; and, as an index of its international reputation, on the number of overseas staff it employs and foreign students it is educating.

More controversially, its ranking also depends on two opinion surveys. Academics across the world were asked to name the premier institution in their discipline, and employers what they thought of the graduates they interview and the universities, therefore, that these graduates attended.

Dr Brian Lang, the principal of St Andrews University, questions “the inexplicable seismic shifts” to be found in rankings from one year to the next. He argues that tables should be based on “stable, measurable criteria, not something as volatile as opinion”.

I would add that the apparently objective statistical data are in one crucial sense suspect. The number of times academics are cited by their colleagues might seem a good indicator of the importance of their work and therefore the standing of their university, but, in private, many academics will admit that the whole business of ‘citations’ is open to the charge of collusion. You quote my work and I will quote yours and we will both be famous.

That said, the table has the universities that everyone would expect to be world-class in premier positions and must, therefore, be doing something right. We should celebrate the fact that Oxford and Cambridge, Imperial College and University College London are still in the top 10. Equally, we should ask why other British universities appear to be losing to international competition.

One explanation for the declining status of some UK universities, as vice-chancellors have been quick to point out, is funding. Harvard, the No 1 university in the world, has an endowment fund bigger than the total annual public funding of all universities in the UK.

This means Harvard can use higher salaries and bigger bursaries to lure academic staff and students away from universities such as, say, Oxford and Cambridge. Funding matters, and our top universities will not remain world-class without a large injection of cash.

This will never be found without a radical rethink of higher education in the UK. We do not need to educate 50% of those aged between 18 and 30 to degree level and we should not be wasting public money on fifth-rate institutions, which, having abandoned any pretence that admission depends on academic achievement, still struggle to fill their places. Taxpayers’ money should be spent on those institutions of higher education that properly deserve to be called universities.

I can hear the squeals of protest as I type. What about “the knowledge economy”? What about “widening access” and “increasing participation”? What indeed! These are the myths that are threatening the continued excellence of our top universities.

We live, it is said, in a knowledge economy that depends on a highly skilled workforce. Everyone must stay in education longer to gain these high-level skills. In fact, we need a relatively small number of people who have been educated to a superbly high standard.

Shop workers who swipe credit cards and receptionists in hotels might need to be computer-literate, but the invention of the computer has not changed the nature of their work. They are no more knowledge workers than they were in 1950, and they do not need to spend three years studying for a degree in a pseudo-academic subject to do their jobs effectively.

The government’s expansion of higher education has resulted in appallingly high drop-out rates from too many of the new “universities”. It is producing ever-increasing numbers of graduates who, having incurred thousands of pounds of personal debt, cannot obtain graduate-status employment. And it has done nothing to solve the skills shortages that are so damaging to the British economy.

Neither, I’m afraid, has the drive to widen access done anything much for the bright 18-year-old who has had the misfortune to attend a sink school. What it has done is threaten the academic excellence of those universities that are still excellent.

World-class universities are what they are because they have world-class students and academics. Gordon Brown does not understand this. He wants admissions tutors to favour applicants from state schools and, ideally, failing state schools. Too many vice-chancel-lors are keen to do his bidding. If they were prepared to fight for the independence of their institutions and to defend their right to admit the candidate with the best academic qualifications irrespective of family or educational background, more UK universities might be able to climb higher in the table.

The global competition is bound to intensify. Universities from 13 different countries figure in the top 50 in this league table. Among these are nine Asian institutions. The number of North American universities in the top 100 has dropped slightly. My prediction, if government policy on higher education does not change, is that few, if any, UK universities will be found in the top 10 in a decade’s time. Their academics will have emigrated, tempted by better salaries; their students will have chosen the institution that offers the highest bursary. We have a year or two to decide whether as a nation we want our elite universities to survive.

We have a year or two at most to rescue the concept of an intellectual elite from egali-tarian opprobrium. Will Labour change its spots? Will Cam-eron’s Conservatives renounce social engineering and protect world-class institutions that are in peril? Sadly, neither prospect seems to me very likely.

Chris Woodhead is a professor of education at the University of Buckingham and was chief inspector of schools from 1994 to 2000

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