What cities have the most college degrees per capita?
31 August 2006CNN has a list of the “smartest cities” compiled by the United States Census Bureau. They decided you were “smart” if you’ve got a college degree. Most educated cities is probably a more accurate term. Which ones make the list? Here’s the top ten:
1) Seattle, Washington, where 52.7% of people have a college degree.
2) San Francisco, California, with 50.1%.
3) Raleigh, North Carolina, with 50.1%.
4) Washington, D.C. with 45.3%.
5) Austin, Texas with 44.1%.
6) Minneapolis, Minnesota with 43.2%.
7) Atlanta, Georgia with 42.4%.
Boston, Massachussets with 40.9%.
9) San Diego, California with 40.4%.
10) Lexington-Fayette, Kentucky with 39.5%.
Overall in the U.S., 28% of people get a 4 year bachelor’s degree. So some of these cities have nearly double the national average. Why would you ever care about this data? It can be useful for college-educated people who are looking for good cities to find jobs in. The thing I like about this list is that it shows you indirectly where good jobs have clustered. Smaller cities tend to be able to turn themselves into focal points for a particular industry or kind of job. There’s a reason Seattle tops the list, and it’s not because of the stereotype that it’s filled with aging hippies who got college diplomas for lack of anything better to do. It’s because they’ve got lots of software companies that built headquarters in the area and attracted educated people to fill up the jobs. Many of the cities on the list are smaller and have lower costs of living - Austin, Raleigh, Minneapolis - those are places you can go find a job that requires an education pretty easily, get a high salary, and live relatively cheaply.
Part of the reason to pay attention to these numbers is also the basic “watch what others are doing” idea. You don’t want to be a lemming, but if everyone else with a college degree has noticed that Seattle’s a good job market and moved there, then you ought to think about why.
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