Аннотация:“Smart city” is a new model of territorial development, taking into account the growing importance of information, innovation and human capital. One of the main elements of the “smart city” is a developed system of higher education. The aim of this work was to study the impact of higher education on "smart" and innovative cities. The objectives of this work were to obtain quantitative characteristics of the impact of the University on the smart city. Approach to solving this problem was to build indicators based on indicators that characterize the quality of life, and ratings to compare cities on their basis. The hypothesis of the study is that the higher education system has a positive impact on the development of smart and innovative cities. A theoretically justified method of constructing an indicator of a certain direction of socio-economic development is a component analysis of indicators characterizing this direction. As a result, the rankings of Russian and foreign cities based on the characteristics of quality of life, which prove that education is a key indicator of the development of "smart" and innovative cities.