IOI
Among the Top Blockchain Universities, CoinDesk has released its ranking this year. It is dominated by Asian schools, while European universities show improvement.
According to a blog post from the crypto platform, the top spot goes to the National University of Singapore, followed by the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, the University of California Berkeley, the University of Zurich and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, rounding out the top five.
A number of blockchain research centres, club meetings, conferences, and company partnerships, along with its master’s program in digital financial technology, contributed to the Singapore National University’s top ranking.
Last year, only US schools were included in the ranking, which was expanded to 230 international schools this year. Rankings are based on cost, academic reputation, research output, campus innovations like student clubs, employment outcomes, courses, and research centres.
Besides Hong Kong Polytechnic and Tsinghua University, two other Asian schools made the list – the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Tsinghua University. The University of Zurich, University College London, and ETH Zurich both made the list. RMIT of Melbourne, the University of Zurich, and the University of Zurich represent Australia.
As for US schools, Berkeley placed third, MIT fifth, and Cornell came in at number 17. Stanford, last year’s fourth-place finisher, came in at number 12. Last year’s fifth-place finisher Harvard finished 49th. CoinDesk reports the declines indicate “strong competition this time and that schools with good reputations may not always perform well when it comes to blockchain”.
Universities in Europe, followed by schools in the United States, rank second highest on average. CoinDesk found that Asian and Australian universities topped the regional rankings with 63 points each, while European universities followed with 60 points each, and American and Canadian universities scored 59 points each.
The most expensive education options for blockchain are largely found in Canada and the United States, where annual tuition is an average of $52,000. Blockchain schools in Asia and Australia are the most affordable, with an average tuition of $12,000 a year. The second most affordable blockchain schools are located in Europe, with an average tuition of $16,700 a year.
This is CoinDesk’s second year compiling these rankings and it has consolidated 230 international schools, an increase over last year’s 46 US schools.
The study was led by Stanford and MIT researcher Reuben Youngblom and CoinDesk’s Joe Lautzenhiser, who looked at publicly available sources, including course catalogues, programme prospectuses, social media channels, club web page the Clarivate Web of Science, and devised an online survey where academics, students and stakeholders could rate the offerings at their schools and their competitors.
Rankings this year also considered the varying cost of university education and introduced a metric to compare unsubsidized tuition costs with living costs in the school’s region.
