news
Sydney passes Melbourne as top study city
Australia’ s largest cities rank 4th, 5th best for students. By Antonia Maiolo
Sydney has overtaken Melbourne as the highest placed Australian study destination, a recent survey shows.
In the latest QS Best Student Cities list, Sydney came in fourth, climbing three places from last year, followed closely by Melbourne which claimed equal fifth with Zurich.
Other Australian cities that made the top 50 include Brisbane at 26th, Perth 30th, Canberra 37th and Adelaide at equal 38th.
Five Sydney-based universities ranked by QS included the University of Sydney, ranked 38th in the world and University of New South Wales at 52nd.
Macquarie University, UTS and the University of Western Sydney were other Sydney institutions that made the university rankings list.
Head of research at QS, Ben Sowter, said the ranking provides students with a complementary tool to the universityfocused ranking.“ After all, a university experience is intrinsically influenced by the location, especially for international students,” Sowter said.“ With students becoming increasingly internationallymobile, our aim is to widen students’ horizons and provide options which they may not have previously considered.”
Sowter said Sydney outclassed Melbourne by just three points based on a slightly stronger score for quality of living. Sydney achieved 99 out of 100 in this category whilst Melbourne scored 85.
Melbourne, however, scored slightly higher than Sydney in the rankings category of the index, which assesses the quantity and quality of each cities’ universities, with the University of Melbourne the country’ s second-highest ranked.
Other QS ranked universities in Melbourne include Monash University, RMIT, Deakin University, La Trobe
University, Swinburne University of Technology and Victoria University.
Paris held onto its position at number one, only just beating London for the top spot by two points, due to its world-leading universities and low tuition fees.
The survey, compiled by the team behind the annual QS World University Rankings, rates cities on 14 criteria, including quality of living and affordability, employer activity, the number and mix of students and the number and quality of institutions.
Cities must have a population of over 250,000 and at least two ranked institutions in the QS World University Rankings to be considered in the review.
Additional indicators include reviewing a city’ s global influence, whilst the iPad index provides a proxy for the affordability of consumer technology. n
Best Student Cities 2013 / 14: Top 10
2013 2012 CITY 1 1 Paris 2 2 London 3 12 Singapore 4 6 Sydney = 5 4 Melbourne = 5 7 Zurich 7 19 Hong Kong 8 3 Boston 9 10 Montreal 10 13 Munich
Source: QS Quacquarelli Symonds 2004-13 TopUniversities. com / StudentCities
ANU sells pathway courses
Deal with private Study Group expected to boost international enrolment.
Private operator Study Group will take over Australian National University’ s pathway college – in a deal expected to increase the number of international students entering the university through the college.
ANU College, which provides English language and pathway courses to the university, has been sold to the Australianbased Study Group for an undisclosed amount.
Up to 400 students attend the college each year. This number expected to grow given Study Group’ s international scope. The operator provides its affiliates’ educational courses to about 50,000 students from more than 120 countries annually.
The college offers domestic and international students who don’ t reach
ANU’ s minimum ATAR of 80 a way to attend the university.
ANU said the change of ownership would not lead to job cuts as all current staff who are offered the opportunity to transition over are expected to choose to do so.
Deputy vice-chancellor academic Marnie Hughes-Warrington said ANU would continue to be involved with the pathway college by working with Study Group on delivering new programs.
“ We have joint committees with Study Group that focus on the discussion and nomination of new programs, a management committee and also a marketing committee,” Hughes-Warrington said.“ We really welcome this as an opportunity to work with Study Group and we’ re pleased to have this partnership developing with them.” n
8 | campusreview. com. au