for foreigners, australia offers the foremost expensive education

 Australia is the most expensive country for foreign students to pursue a higher education, surpassing the United States and Britain, a report by HSBC has found.

Average annual tuition fees for foreign students in Australia and the United States are roughly the same, about $25,000, the report, released last week, found, but a higher cost of living pushed Australia to the top of the list. A year of study in Australia costs about $38,000 when living expenses are factored in, while foreign students in the United States pay around $35,000. Britain ranked third, with an average cost of about $30,000.

The research by HSBC was compiled from public data in 13 countries. Fees were calculated from the average cost of tuition for foreign students at the 10 largest institutions in each country. Cost of living data came from HESA Global Education Rankings 2010, the Expatistan index and HSBC’s own research and were adjusted for inflation.

Of the 13 countries surveyed, the most affordable place to study was Germany, with an average of $6,200 a year in tuition and living expenses. In Asia, Singapore and Hong Kong are the most expensive for overseas students, who pay about $24,000 annually in Singapore and $22,000 in Hong Kong. — GRACE TSOI

 

Harvard Ranked Top University in the World; Stanford is No. 2

Harvard University is the top institution of higher education in the world, according to the 2013 Academic Ranking of World Universities, followed by Stanford University; the University of California, Berkeley; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Cambridge.

The rankings, released Thursday by the Center for World-Class Universities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, also put California Institute of Technology; Princeton University; Columbia University; the University of Chicago and the University of Oxford in the top 10. The best ranked universities in the Asia-Pacific region were the University of Tokyo, ranked 21st; Kyoto University, at 26th, and the University of Melbourne, at 56th.

The study surveyed more than 1,200 universities worldwide on the basis of six indicators, including the number of alumni and faculty who had received Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, the number of highly cited researchers and publications, and per capita performance. — ANNE-SOPHIE BOLON

 

Poll finds British Colleges Meet Students’ Standards

Eighty-five percent of undergraduate students in Britain are satisfied with their higher education, according to the ninth annual National Student Survey, whose results were published last week.

The survey of about 300,000 undergraduates in their final year of studies represented a response rate of 68.6 percent of eligible students. The study, in which a small number of institutions did not participate, was carried out by Ipsos MORI and commissioned by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, a government body. It is designed to guide prospective students as well as to provide feedback on higher education institutions. Students reported a slight increase in satisfaction over previous years in categories including assessment and feedback, academic support, organization and management, learning resources and student unions.

The University of Bath was at the top of the list, with 94 percent of its students expressing satisfaction. The universities of Buckingham, East Anglia, Essex, Keele and St. Andrews all received an approval rating of 93 percent. The University of Cambridge received a 92 percent satisfaction rate, as did the Open University and the University of Surrey. The University of Oxford was just behind at 91 percent, tied with the University of Exeter and Newman University, Birmingham. The survey comes on the heels of a study by the country’s Higher Education Statistics Agency that found that 86.4 percent of recent British graduates had either found jobs or were continuing their studies.