A professor of higher education at the University of Melbourne, Simon Marginson, will tell the international Academic Consortium for the 21st Century conference in Adelaide that the rise of Asian universities will present a cultural and economic shock to western universities.

''It will be an increasingly plural higher education world. And models of higher education will no longer be dominated by Anglo-American ideas.''

The biggest driver of the growth has been the formidable rise of the Asian middle classes, he said.

The European Union Institute for Strategic Economic Studies estimates the Asian middle class will grow to 1.7 billion in 2020, comprising more than half the global middle class of 3.2 billion.

Australia is also lagging behind in investment. In 2009, Australia accounted for 1.8 per cent of global spending on research and development, spending, $22 billion a year, compared with the $402 billion spent in south, south-east and east Asia (31.5 per cent of global spending).

''We seem to be able to maintain our standing in higher education and research but what we don't seem to be able to do is lift it, which is what the Asian countries are doing at a very fast rate,'' Professor Marginson said.

He said Australian university students and researchers needed to properly engage with, and learn in, Asian institutions to give Australia a chance of keeping up.