Singapore has an excellent education system. This is once again proved by Singapore’s fourth and eighth graders ranking  first in science and second only to Hong Kong in an international survey by Boston College. The complete report on the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study can be downloaded here.

Singapore’s excellent school system is complemented by world class universities with the National University of Singapore (NUS) ranked 30th on the 2008 QS Top 100 Universities list. The only Asia Pacific universities ranked higher are Australian National University (16th), University of Tokyo (19th), Kyoto University (25th), and University of Hong Kong (26th). Nanyang Technological University (NTU), also in Singapore, is 77th on the list. The top 10 are

1. Harvard
2. Yale
3. Cambridge
4. Oxford
5. California Institute of Technology
6. Imperial College London
7. University College London
8. University of Chicago
9. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
10. Columbia University

Ranked 11th to 15th are all American universities: University of Pennsylvania (11th), Princeton (12th), Duke and Johns Hopkins (13th) and Cornell (15th). Others in the top 20 are Stanford (17th), University of Michigan (18th) and McGill University (20th).

Singapore is naturally proud of its universities, which attract academics and students from various countries.

But Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, Oxford, Chicago, MIT, Columbia, Stanford, Princeton, Caltech, Cornell, Penn, Johns Hopkins, Duke, Imperial College, University College London, Tokyo, Kyoto have produced Nobel Prize winners and are regularly in the news for various studies and achievements.

What is it that makes the two Singapore universities, which are much younger and less often in the news, world class?

Visit the QS World University Rankings website and check the detailed rankings.

Singapore universities are world class because they attract international faculty and the highest number of international students in Asia Pacific outside Australia and their academics get good peer reviews. National University of Singapore graduates also get the best employer reviews in all of Asia Pacific outside Australia. But they lag behind other top schools in research work, All these factors are taken into consideration in the world university rankings. But what counts most is academic peer review -– a survey in which more than 100 academics from Singapore took part.

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