Paris has been named the world’s best city for students for the third year running, followed by Melbourne and London, in the QS Best Student Cities 2015 ranking, which judges locations according to criteria including university rankings, student mix, quality of living and affordability.
The French capital had more entries in this year’s QS World University Rankings, including ParisTech, ENS Paris and Université Paris-Sorbonne, than any city apart from London, and its relatively low tuition fees and cultural attractions contributed to its success.
However, according to QS: “All the measurements used to create the QS Best Student Cities still don’t capture the real appeal of studying in Paris, one of the world’s most historic, culturally vital and beautiful cities.”
“All the measurements used to create the QS Best Student Cities still don’t capture the real appeal of studying in Paris”
The US was the most represented country, with eight cities making the top 50, followed by Australia, which has six, and the UK and Canada with four and three.
Toronto and Seoul both entered the top 10 for the first time, each rising four places to sit at ninth and tenth, while Tokyo jumped an astonishing 10 places to seventh position.
The introduction this year of new metrics used to compile the ranking – now in its third year – was key to Tokyo’s rise through the ranks, Ben Sowter, head of research at QS, told The PIE News.
“We are persistently trying to identify additional relevant measures to enrich its value to students and parents,” Sowter said. “This year we have added measures on Tolerance, Pollution, Corruption and perhaps most importantly, Safety. We have also switched our lead Liveability measure from Mercer to the Economist.”
“For a city of its size Tokyo is clean and exceptionally safe – indeed three of the seven cities above it in our study for this dimension are also Japanese and five are East Asian,” he commented. “Tokyo has made iterative progress in many areas, but it’s the added depth of our Desirability component where the real gains have been made.”
London led in both the Rankings and Employer Activity categories, making it the only city in the world to come top in two categories, but lost points in the affordability, safety and pollution classes, causing it to fall by one place compared to last year.
According to the QS Best Student Cities ranking, the top 10 cities in the world to study in 2015 are:
1. Paris
2. Melbourne
3. London
4. Sydney
5. Hong Kong
6. Boston
7. Tokyo
8. Montreal
9. Toronto
10. Seoul
