Lisbon Ranked World's Best City for Students
Lisbon has been named the top city for students globally in a recent ranking. The assessment highlighted the Portuguese capital's affordability, quality of life, and the growing number of academic programs taught in English as key factors in its appeal to international students.
- The ranking by placement company BOXIE24 placed Lisbon as the third best in Europe, with Prague and Leuven taking the top two spots. The study evaluated ten key indicators, with an emphasis on the QS university ranking, safety, and the density of higher education institutions. - Affordability was a significant factor in Lisbon's high ranking; it was the second most affordable city in the top ten, with an estimated monthly cost for a single person at €724.80 and a monthly public transport pass at €40. - Portugal's national digital strategy has focused on modernizing and digitalizing public administration to simplify interactions for citizens and companies. This has resulted in initiatives like the "Chave Móvel Digital" for easy authentication to access public services. - The European Union's Digital Services Act (DSA), which took full effect in 2024, creates a unified legal framework for digital service accountability and transparency across all member states, simplifying the regulatory environment for digital services. - As part of its digital transformation, Portugal has embraced GovTech initiatives, which leverage technology to innovate public services. The broader European GovTech market is valued at over €365 billion and aims to streamline administrative processes and increase the quality of public services. - A recent focus for public sector bodies across the EU and UK is updating websites and mobile apps to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA standard, which became the minimum for UK government services in October 2024. - To foster innovation, the European Commission is promoting AI adoption in the public sector through initiatives like the "AI Factories Initiative," which brings together universities, industry, and supercomputing centers. Case studies from cities like Kortrijk, Belgium, which uses a multilingual virtual assistant, demonstrate AI's potential to improve citizen services. - The EU's primary research and innovation funding program, Horizon Europe, has a budget of €93.5 billion for 2021-2027 to address challenges like climate change and boost competitiveness. To remain competitive with the US and China, a recent report by Mario Draghi recommended increasing the next program's budget to €200 billion.
