Singapore: The New Silicon Valley?

On both a global and regional level, Singapore has seen a remarkable improvement in its fortunes in the past five years, driven by substantial investments, a pioneering approach to establishing partnerships with world-class institutions in the West, and the aggressive recruitment of leading international faculty and students.

The National University of Singapore (NUS) retains second place in this year’s QS University Rankings: Asia, now joint with Hong Kong University. The institution has been one of the fastest risers in the region in the last five years, having ranked 10^th in 2009.

NUS is the top-performing institution in the employer reputation survey, testament to the excellent reputation of its graduates among Asian employers. It also ranks second for citations per paper, suggesting it is producing highly influential research.

Nanyang Technological University (NTU) also sees a surge in performance this year, rising from 17 to 10=. Like HKUST (number one in the ranking), NTU has only been in existence for 22 years, and places second in the QS Top 50 Under 50 ranking for the second year in a row.

The upward trajectory of NUS and NTU is partly due to a progressive approach to internationalization that has pushed up standards across the board and established the two as meeting places for leading minds from East and West. The two have also benefitted from a new Universities Trust that pledged a further $4bn to Singapore’s universities in 2010, facilitating their rapidly growing international profile.

NUS has launched research partnerships with prestigious international institutions including Yale and Duke University, while NTU has followed suit by collaborating with Imperial College London and Warwick University. Several of these collaborative projects are housed in campuses near state-of-the-art science parks to facilitate the development of spin-off companies.

The policy seems to be taking off, with a wave of internet start-ups and multi-national investors meaning the prosperous city-state has already been dubbed Asia’s answer to Silicon Valley.

The need to innovate through research and development is one of the major drivers of global competition in higher education, and Singapore’s pioneering investment and collaboration will increase its chances of producing the Googles, Apples and Microsofts of the future.

Read more: The Korean education miracle continues