Only three Australian universities made the top 100 in the latest global reputation ranking survey compared with five last year.

Asia’s rapidly improving universities scored 18 slots in the top 100 of the Times Higher Education’s World Reputation Rankings compared with only 10 last year.

Only the University of Melbourne, which was equal 49th, the Australian National University and the University of Sydney, which were both in the 61 to 70 band, made it into the top 100.

Two others, the University of Queensland and Monash University, were in the top 100 in 2015 but didn’t make the cut this year.

The reputation rankings are based on the opinions of more than 10,000 academics worldwide who name the best universities in their field.

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.

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.

“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.