The Most and Least Educated Cities in the US
According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 45.7 percent of Americans aged 25 - 64 have some form of higher education. This makes the U.S. the sixth most educated OECD country.
But what are the most and least educated cities in the United States? Financial website WalletHub may have the answer.
The company used eleven factors to rank 150 cities. These factors included the number of people who have graduated high school or college, the quality of local universities and colleges and the differences in education between men and women or races.
“Higher levels of education tend to lead to higher salaries,” WalletHub says. The more the graduates earn, the more they pay in taxes. So they want to live in a place that offers a good return on the money they've put into their education and a high quality of life.
WalletHub says that graduates choose where to live for many different reasons.
Some want to live around people with similar education levels for socializing or to make career connections, while some may want to be near their family and friends. Others may be forced to move to a place where they can find a job that matches their qualifications. Many major tech companies are based in Silicon Valley, for example, so graduates looking for a job in the tech industry often move to this area.
Here are the top 5 educated cities:
- Ann Arbor, Michigan
- Washington, DC Metropolitan Area
- Silicon Valley, California
- Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina
- San Francisco-Oakland, California
And here are the least educated cities:
- Ocala, Florida
- Fresno, California
- Stockton-Lodi, California
- Salinas, California
- Hickory, North Carolina
