CoinDesk released this year’s ranking for the best universities for Blockchain. While Asian schools dominate the list, European universities are increasing their position. The National University of Singapore took the top spot, followed by the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Berkeley, University of Zurich and cryptocurrency exchange MIT
In a blog post, the crypto platform claimed that the National University of Singapore took the top spot, followed by the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, University of California Berkeley, University of Zurich and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which made up the top five.
Singapore National University takes the top spot thanks to its multiple blockchain research centers, frequent blockchain-themed conferences, clubs, business partnerships and its master’s program in digital financial technology.
This year’s sample size has been expanded to include 230 international schools, compared to only US schools in last year’s ranking. The ranking includes fees, academic reputation, research results, campus blockchain offerings such as student clubs and research centers, courses and work results.
Three other Asian schools made the top 10: Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Tsinghua University and Chinese University of Hong Kong. Australia was represented by RMIT Melbourne, while European Universities Zurich, UCL and ETH Zurich made it into the rankings.
Among US schools, Berkeley finished third and MIT fifth, while last year’s second-place Cornell came in at 17, last year’s fourth place at Stanford was steady at 12 this year. Harvard dropped to 49 from fifth place last year.
The drop reflects the competition is tough this time around and that schools with a solid overall reputation don’t always perform best when it comes to blockchain, CoinDesk said.
On average, European universities scored the second highest, followed by US schools.
Asian and Australian schools lead the region with an average scale score of 63 points; while European universities came in second with an average scale score of 60 points, and American and Canadian schools achieved an average scale score of 59 points, CoinDesk said.
In terms of fees, the best Canadian and American blockchain schools tend to have the highest fees, averaging $52,000 per year of study. The best European blockchain schools are the second most affordable, costing an average of $16,700 per year, and the schools are in Asia and Australia, with an annual average of $12,000 being the most affordable schools for blockchain.
Check the full Top 50 ranking for `Top Universities for Blockchain 2021` below:
| RANKING | SCHOOL | SCORE | |
| 1 | NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE | 100.00 | |
| 2 | Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology | 97.65 | |
| 3 | University of California Berkeley | 93.26 | |
| 4 | University of Zurich | 91.66 | |
| 5 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 91.57 | |
| 6 | Hong Kong Polytechnic University | 84.30 | |
| 7 | UCL | 81.54 | |
| 8 | Tsinghua University | 79.20 | |
| 9 | Chinese University of Hong Kong | 75.30 | |
| 10 | ETH Zurich | 75.04 | |
| 11 | Nanyang Technological University, Singapore | 74.98 | |
| 12 | Stanford University | 68.41 | |
| 13 | UNSW Sydney | 66.29 | |
| 14 | City University of Hong Kong | 66.13 | |
| 15 | University of Oxford | 65.47 | |
| 16 | Shanghai Jiao Tong University | 65.18 | |
| 17 | Cornell University | 63.98 | |
| 18 | Delft University of Technology | 63.85 | |
| 19 | University of Hong Kong | 61.97 | |
| 20 | University of Sydney | 61.48 | |
| 21 | École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland) | 60.78 | |
| 22 | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | 60.10 | |
| 23 | University of Cambridge | 58.69 | |
| 24 | Hong Kong University of Science and Technology | 58.51 | |
| 25 | University of California Los Angeles | 58.40 | |
| 26 | Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology | 57.87 | |
| 27 | Sun Yat-sen University | 57.18 | |
| 28 | University of British Columbia | 55.80 | |
| 29 | Peking University | 54.15 | |
| 30 | Arizona State University | 51.86 | |
| 31 | Technical University of Munich | 51.78 | |
| 32 | University of Edinburgh | 51.77 | |
| 33 | Carnegie Mellon University | 51.10 | |
| 34 | University of Melbourne | 50.95 | |
| 35 | Worcester Polytechnic Institute | 50.77 | |
| 36 | Georgetown University | 50.40 | |
| 37 | Fudan University | 49.95 | |
| 38 | University of Southern California | 49.57 | |
| 39 | Korea University | 48.85 | |
| 40 | Imperial College London | 48.59 | |
| 41 | New York University | 48.55 | |
| 42 | Tokyo Institute of Technology | 47.37 | |
| 43 | University of Warwick | 47.19 | |
| 44 | Fordham University | 46.89 | |
| 45 | Columbia University | 46.46 | |
| 46 | Seoul National University | 45.72 | |
| 47 | King Abdulaziz University | 45.59 | |
| 48 | Monash University | 44.05 | |
| 49 | Harvard University | 43.89 | |
| 50 | Zhejiang University | 43.37 | |
This is the second year CoinDesk has compiled these rankings and included 230 international schools compared to last year’s ranking of 46 US schools for the Top 30.
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, program 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.
This year’s ranking also considered the varying cost of university education and introduced a metric that compares unsubsidized tuition costs against the average cost of living in the region of the school’s location.
