Are there other cities in the world like Boston where a large number of good postsecondary institutions are located? [closed]

Question

The really unusual thing about the greater Boston area is that so many and such good postsecondary institutions are crowded into that area. Harvard, M.I.T., Tufts, Brandeis, and others.

Is Boston unique in all the world in that respect, or is there some comparable place elsewhere?

Answer 1

So, "good postsecondary institutions" is a bit hard to define. University rankings are probably about the only thing less meaningful than impact factors, but they'll do to give us a basic idea here - do any cities have a large number of universities that are rated higher than the lowest one in your set?

The US News & World Report has a handy list searchable by city. Annoyingly it doesn't quite work for the US (it defines city strictly) but it's a good approximation. Brandeis is rated #280 (making it fifth in the Boston area, if you include Northeastern).

On the US News & World Report ranking, and plugging in a few likely candidates, there are

• six London universities ranked higher than Brandeis.
• five NYC universities ranked higher than Brandeis.
• four Paris universities ranked higher than Brandeis.

So that's one higher, one equal, one close. In the specific case of London, Wikipedia has a handy table of universities by ranking. Depending on which metric you want to use, it has either five, six, or eleven (!) institutions ranked higher than Brandeis.

So with these admittedly flawed tools, it looks like London is likely to be an answer, but there are a couple more close contenders. There may be other concentrations in the US depending on how generously you define the city areas - I would guess the Bay Area around San Francisco is a likely candidate, for example.

Answer 2

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I'll try to demonstrate this.

— Boston is the location for 35 colleges, universities, and community colleges.1 — there are about 152,000 students at Boston's institutions of higher learning. www.bostonplans.org

Considering that Boston's population in 2016 was about 4,667,000, student population in this city is 3.3%.

On the other hand, population of Oklahoma City Metro area is 1,457,758. It's a home to 20 universities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_Oklahoma_City) with a student body of about 75,000 or 5.1% of the population.

USA Today ranks Oklahoma City# 3 vs Boston#9 in Best Cities for students.

http://college.usatoday.com/2015/04/09/best-u-s-cities-for-millennial-college-students/

I hope you got my point.

Answer 3

Melbourne and Sydney Australia both have a large number of world class universities. I'm not sure what you're cut-off is for world class, but looking at this site and focusing on Melbourne as the example (24th July 2017):

Monash and University of Melbourne are both in top 100 globally. Deakin, Swinburne, and RMIT are both in top 500, and La Trobe is 535, Victoria Uni is 613. So that's possibly 5 or 7 strong universities in Melbourne depending on how you define things.

Sydney is similar, especially if you include satellite cities like Newcastle and Wollongong. And you could be even more inclusive and include Canberra.

A few reasons for this concentration of universities:

• About a third of Australia's entire population lives in and around Melbourne and Sydney.
• Higher education is one of Australia's major export industries. In particular, fees from many international students across Asia support the sector.
• While we have the group of 8 in Australia (i.e., perhaps analogous to Ivy League) that have been around for longer and often rank in the top 100 or 200 in the world, the structure of universities in Australia is such that most strive to be complete universities contributing to international research. Thus, there are many universities in Australia that are in that next group (e.g., the 200 to 500 range).