The 10 most highly educated global cities

Which major cities have the best universities, and the most university-educated citizens?

June 6, 2014

The Cities of Opportunity 2014 report, published by PricewaterhouseCoopers, aims to “take the pulse” of 30 major cities worldwide, rating them on everything from the cost of its public transport to the amount of green space within its boundaries.

The sixth edition of the annual report, which came out last month, also includes two measures that specifically relate to higher education: the percentage of each city’s population that has obtained a higher education qualification, and how its universities perform in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings.

Each city is given a score of between 1 and 30 for each measure, depending on its standing against the others (30 points for being the best, 1 for being the worst). We’ve added the two higher education scores together to show which cities come out on top. Here’s the top 10.

Top 10 most highly educated global cities

RankCityHigher education score (out of 60)
1London57
2Paris56
3Los Angeles51
=4San Francisco50
=4Stockholm50
6Chicago49
7Sydney48
8New York47
=9Tokyo44
=9Toronto44


To access the report in full, including a breakdown of all the scores, visit PricewaterhouseCoopers.

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Reader's comments (4)

LA and Sydney over NYC? Boston absent all together, despite Harvard, MIT, BU, Tufts, Brandeis, etc.? Moscow also missing? This list would make a cat laugh.
Surprising results in places, I agree. For the record, Adrian, Boston was not one of the cities evaluated by PwC (see the link to the original research for the full list). Moscow came in with 34/60 on the HE indicators (it was let down by its performance in the rankings, but was 8th for % of population with HE qualifications).
Is Singapore in the mix somewhere?
Yep - it scored 36 on the two HE measures we're looking at here, so outside the top 10. Follow the PwC link (bottom of the article) for more detailed Singapore analysis!

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