Singapore drops eight places in best student cities rankings

It placed 6th last year.

It may seem like Singapore is losing its steam amongst the other student city peers, as the latest QS Best Student Cities revealed.

The rankings, released by global higher education analysts QS Quacquarelli Symonds, compilers of the QS World University Rankings, saw Paris lose the number-one position for the first time since the ranking began in 2012. Montreal replaces it at the top of the list, which ranks the world’s top 100 cities.

After placing sixth last year, Singapore ranked 14th on the list this year. According to QS, it ranked 11th globally in the Employer Activity indicator, which measures the likelihood of employers to seek to hire graduates from a city’s universities, 15th globally for Desirability, and 20th globally for Student Mix or diversity. Meanwhile, it ranked 7th globally in the Ranking indicator, which measures the number of top-ranked universities and their position in the ranking. These are excellent results despite the slight drop in all bar one of these four indicators.

However, Singapore drops significantly in the Affordability indicator where it falls 38 places compared to last year’s result. It now ranks 90 out of 125 cities in this indicator. In the new Student View indicator, Singapore ranks 31st globally. QS’s Student View indicator is based on the survey responses of 18,000 students worldwide. Students were asked to name the city in which they would most like to study, their experience studying in a particular city, and their intention to remain there post-graduation

Amongst the cities in Asia, Singapore ranks fourth, behind Seoul (4th globally), Tokyo (7th globally) and Hong Kong (11th globally).