US universities are planning to use recruiters to attract top British students with the promise of bumper bursaries.

Briain’s 12% share of the overseas market could be threatened by burgeoning numbers of US universities using recruiters to entice international students.

Ivy league universities - Harvard, Yale and Princeton will be able to offer substantial grants to UK students and have endowments of more than £42bn.

Mitch Leventhal, vice-provost for international affairs at the University of Cincinnati and founder of the American International Recruitment Council, told The Times: “The US is adopting 21st-century marketing practices. People haven’t been sharing best practice; now we need to bring this out into the open.”