The Lens
QS World University Rankings:
Best Student Cities 2024 | Executive MBA Rankings 2023
In this edition, QS Best Student Cities looks at the world’s top locations to be a student, while the QS Executive MBA Rankings showcases 200 different programmes from business schools all over the world.
11th edition
cities
QS Best Student Cities 2024
The 11th edition of QS Best Student Cities 2024 saw London taking the number one spot once again, followed by Asian cities Tokyo and Seoul. Last month’s QS World University Rankings 2024 also saw the UK capital in the spotlight, where four out of the world’s top ten universities were in the UK and two of those in London- Imperial College London and UCL.
Tokyo, which came in second among the 160 cities, climbed up five spots from last year. Tokyo is the highest improver of the three ranked Japanese cities this year and this was largely attributed to improved feedback from current and former students about their experience as a study location, ascending 10 places in the ‘Student Voice’ index. Melbourne, the highest ranked city in Australia, earned the second greatest score with 98.4 in ‘Student Voice’ and the third highest in ‘Student Mix’ with 98.6 points.
Methodology
The factors that are considered when determining the QS Best Student Cities ranking, and which are given an equal weightage of 16.67 percent, are:
- QS World University Rankings – A category aimed to reflect the collective performance of a city’s universities in the QS World University Rankings.
- Student Mix – Which assesses the student make-up of a city such as on-campus diversity, both overall and from an international perspective.
- Desirability – With a broad spectrum of datasets, this is used to indicate how desirable a destination is as a whole, ranging from safety to pollution.
- Employer Activity – In this indicator, two factors are considered that are derived from the QS Graduate Employability Rankings, examining which cities are the most highly sought-after employment grounds for graduates.
- Affordability – From tuition fees to the cost of living, the affordability indicator measures how cost-effective a city is most likely to be for prospective students and their families.
- Student Voice – Using findings from our yearly QS International Student Survey, we incorporate the views that students have on their experience studying abroad.
HEC Paris snags first spot
Meanwhile, institutions in both Europe and North America dominate the top 10 rankings of the QS Executive MBA Rankings – with INSEAD and London Business School scoring 99.9 in the same category, ‘Employer Reputation’.
In the performance indicator ‘Thought Leadership’, MIT (Sloan) scored 100, the only university in the top 10 with a perfect score in this metric. HEC Paris earned 99.9 in the same category, while ESADE Business School received 96.1 in ‘Diversity’.
This year’s rankings feature six new entrants – two institutions each from North America and Middle East, as well as one institution each from Africa and Asia Pacific. Among the newest entries, it is noteworthy that some institutions are excelling within certain indicators, such as Peking University HSBC School (in 29th place) achieving 97.6 in ‘Thought Leadership’ and Miami (Herbert), in 71st place, scoring the highest in ‘Career Outcomes’ with 85.2 points.
