Montreal replaces Paris as World’s best student city
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Montreal has ended Paris’s five-year run as the world’s best student city, according to global higher education analysts QS Quacquarelli Symonds.
The fifth edition of its ‘QS Best Student Cities ranking’ enumerates the world’s top 100 urban student destinations.
This year’s ranking features a ‘Student View’ indicator for the first time based on a survey of 18,000 international students.
Auckland drops ten places to 28th while Christchurch falls to the 74th position, having lost twenty-seven places.
Loss and Gain
The sharp downward shift is principally attributable to two of the six indicators which inform this ranking: ‘Affordability,’ with Auckland losing 26 places and Christchurch 35, and ‘Employer Activity’ with a drop of 10 and 11 places respectively.
On a positive note, Auckland rises four places in the ‘Desirability’ indicator (16th globally) and gains one place in the ‘Student Mix’ indicators, where it ranks fourth globally.
Findings for the United Kingdom provide reassurance to those concerned about the potential effects of the UK’s impending exit from the EU on its higher education sector.
Canadian success
Montreal’s success is the latest of a series of propitious signs for a city beginning to escape a period of economic stagnation, following positive growth forecasts for 2017, and the recent announcement of its selection as the ‘World’s Most Intelligent City.’
Its first-place ranking is also the highlight of a series of positive performances from Canadian cities: four of the country’s five ranked cities improve their position.
Other key findings include:
Paris drops to second place, receiving reduced rank for Affordability and Desirability.
London rises from fifth place to third place. The results suggest that UK cities remain excellent study destinations in the face of Brexit, with rises in QS’s Affordability indicator, a major contributor to all eight of its ranked cities improving their rank;
Affordability issues adversely affect American cities: though Boston places eighth, ten of its twelve ranked cities drop;
Australia’s high cost-of-living and tuition fees are proving disadvantageous: all its seven ranked cities drop, with Sydney plummeting from fourth to thirteenth, and Melbourne falling from second to fifth.
Seoul is Asia’s best student city, rising to fourth.
Berlin rises to 6th, Tokyo (7th), Munich (9th), and Vancouver (10th) complete the top 10.
