Southeast Asia performance in the QS World Future Skills Index

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The QS World Future Skills Index 2027 shows that Southeast Asia’s future-skills landscape is highly uneven. Among Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, the Philippines and Malaysia, Singapore leads by a wide margin, ranking #12 globally with a 91.1 final score. Indonesia follows at 73.7, ahead of Malaysia at 70.3, the Philippines at 68.5 and Vietnam at 58.8.

The headline ranking only tells part of the story. The Index is built around four equally weighted indicators: Skills Alignment, Academic Readiness, Future of Work and Economic Transformation. Across this Southeast Asia peer group, the strongest economies are not always the most future-ready labour markets, and strong higher education systems do not automatically translate into aligned employer demand

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Country-level analysis

Singapore is the regional benchmark because its strengths are distributed across both skills supply and demand. Its Economic Transformation score of 97.9 is the highest in the group, while its Future of Work score of 91.1 suggests a labour market with strong exposure to roles more likely to be augmented than displaced by AI. Singapore’s education system, labour market and economic strategy are pulling in broadly the same direction.

Indonesia’s profile points to a different challenge. Its Economic Transformation score of 85.6 is stronger than its Academic Readiness and Future of Work performance, suggesting that economic capacity is running ahead of the systems needed to convert growth into future-ready talent. The issue is therefore not only whether Indonesia can expand higher education capacity, but whether graduates can move into roles that make full use of advanced, AI-relevant and industry-aligned skills.

Malaysia’s strength is grounded in academic performance. Its higher education base and employer-university alignment suggest that the supply of talent is comparatively strong. The constraint sits more clearly on the demand side. If the labour market does not generate enough roles that use graduate-level skills, Malaysia risks underemployment and outward movement of talent.  

The Philippines has the opposite imbalance. Demand for skilled talent appears stronger than domestic supply, creating an opportunity for universities to strengthen programme design, employer engagement and graduate outcomes. Better alignment between institutions and industry would help the Philippines convert labour-market demand into higher productivity and stronger economic performance.

Vietnam’s results show the limits of relying on economic momentum alone. Its economy is relatively strong, but weaker alignment between employers and universities, combined with a labour-market structure less prepared for AI augmentation, limits its future-skills readiness. The opportunity is to use economic growth as a platform for higher education investment, curriculum reform and workforce transition, so that growth produces a larger pool of future-ready graduates.

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