14 ms·

Most and Least Educated Cities in America

28 points by tim_sw 9y ago

csense 9y ago
As someone from a place in the Rust Belt that's well in the triple digits of this 150-city ranking, I think I have a little insight. The problem isn't a lack of smart, ambitious kids. It's not bad schools. There are even multiple universities. The problem's that the smart, ambitious kids mostly choose to move elsewhere after HS or college. Even for the ones that want to stay, the local economy and job market isn't that great. We need to improve the level at which you attract/retain both educated people and well-paying jobs for them. How do we do that, given that both are at fairly low levels and it's something like a chicken-or-egg problem?
- NTDF9 9y ago
  As a person who's been about in those areas, I think part of the reason is the mass-delusion that education and sciences is somehow a bad thing. Far too many common folks out in the country think that education is not worth it, science is not worth learning, healthcare and public transportation is second-class. It shows in the way they live, the way they socialize, the way they vote. They'd rather spend money on Church than healthcare. They'd rather worry about their individual taxes than on improving schools and teaching critical thinking and sciences. The really ambitious/educated kids realize that it is a (apologies) shit-hole and get out asap.
  - Pica_soO 9y ago
    Not a chance, that maybe, if you view family and community as a value and realize that all those people going to vanish in the hedonistic accid bath we labeled society will not contribute to either, its your right to withold support to this? Especially if those who turn theire back return to dissolve the livelihood of people without creating a worth-wile replacement? The fact that these communities basically with education create forces that harass and destroy them, makes the delay in backlash actually quite astounding.
    - NTDF9 9y ago
      I never once said that liberal coastal lifestyles are the best way to live. What I was getting at is that the more educated people feel stifled in communities that disregard rational thought process. People out there are good but they have very little proclivity to critical thinking and desire for educated neighbors. An example is that they'd rather segregate the poor out than actually work towards building an educated society and uplift the unfortunate.
      - Pica_soO 9y ago
        And in the citys, that happens? The schizophrenic bum below your appartment is uplifted by you? Or rather kept alive by some church/community driven support group? I grew up in a evangelical high religious environment, with some family members clearly having mental issues, that factored into religion (what you would consider extremism). Some of them viewed the city lifestyle and tech in particular as "parasites" leaching to religious communitys and countrys, as there society was not able to substain itself. I dislike that viewpoint, but disliking never made that piece of ugly truth go away. On the other side, these communities live longer and healthier by now- due to non-parasitic tech and as other countrys show, religious conservatism on its own, spirals into a eternal (every second gen) civil war, once all lands/ressources are used up. Could we agree upon, that both sides need one another- even though everyone in this thread has lovely family memorys.
        TulliusCicero 9y ago
        > Some of them viewed the city lifestyle and tech in particular as "parasites" leaching to religious communitys and countrys, as there society was not able to substain itself. I dislike that viewpoint, but disliking never made that piece of ugly truth go away. Ugly truth? The major urban metros are the ones subsidizing the rural areas, just look at any state's map of each county's tax revenue generation vs spending. It's the rural, country areas that are mooching, the people living there just don't want to admit that the free market that they worship has abandoned them, because it turns out that effective modern commerce requires population density.
  - FussyZeus 9y ago
    Speaking as another former rust-belter: none of this is untrue, but you're speaking as though this anti-authoritarian and anti-education attitude materialized from the ether, and it didn't. For decades the coastal cities have projected at every single turn in nearly every form of media (other than radio really, which is why it has such a strong presence in the rural areas) about how much better the coasts are, how much better the people are, and taken every single opportunity to thumb their nose at the social and community values that rural areas treasure. Combine that with the last 9 years or so, including the economic collapse and ensuing recovery that left any population center under several million basically to freeze and die, and the attitude of rural America is pretty easy to explain. You never gave a shit about what we had to say; why should we give a shit what you have to say now? That's not to say of course that I agree with this attitude. I'm just saying it gets really old to watch all my liberal friends scratching their heads like "Why don't they like us?" after you spent the last several decades pissing them off at every turn, like a college kid who just got their own apartment and doesn't have to live by Mom and Dad's rules anymore. And just like that sort of arrangement: the cities need the rural areas a hell of a lot more than the rural areas need the cities. So you know, keep that in mind.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      I want to preface by saying that I'm not arguing against the need for coastal cities to treat rural populations better. "I don't need you therefore I can mistreat you" is a shitty position that I would never take. > And just like that sort of arrangement: the cities need the rural areas a hell of a lot more than the rural areas need the cities. They may need the rural areas, but do they really need the rural population? I assume you're talking about farms, for food, fuel, etc, but from what I understand, most of that is produced by big farms, using mostly immigrant workers (legal and otherwise)[1]; not necessarily "big corp", but still, a relatively small percentage of the population[2]. In fact, most small scale farmers earn more money from other occupations[3]. It's not clear to me that cities actually need the non-immigrant rural population. [1] https://www.voanews.com/a/us-farmers-depend-on-illegal-immigrants-100541644/162082.html https://www.voanews.com/a/us-farmers-depend-on-illegal-immig... [2] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/big-farms-are-getting-bigger-and-most-small-farms-arent-really-farms-at-all/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/big-farms-are-getting-b... [3] http://farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2017/01/importance-non-farm-rural-economy-farm-household-income/ http://farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2017/01/importance-non-fa...
- losvedir 9y ago
  > The problem's that the smart, ambitious kids mostly choose to move elsewhere after HS or college. Even for the ones that want to stay, the local economy and job market isn't that great. Agreed. In fact, I think the entire thing driving the data here is population flow. I grew up in #148 (Porterville) and moved to #6 (Boston) in the list for school. And most of the people I know in Boston didn't themselves grow up there. A city could have the best education system in the world, but if it didn't have a thriving economy to keep its graduates it would still show up low on this list. On the other hand, a city with a crap education system can still hire in the best graduates of other schools if it has the jobs to draw them. I'm not even sure what data I'd be curious to see here. I was going to say it would be interesting to look at most educated cities considering only people born and raised there. But someone living in the same place all their life is so rare anymore, I'm not sure how meaningful that would be. Maybe just looking at people who graduated college there would be cool; after you graduate you're more likely to just stick around if you can. If that's the case, I guess the takeaway would be to try to establish strong universities in every city?
- le-mark 9y ago
  I'm asking myself, what's the problem here? The lack of bachelors degree holders working the counter at Starbucks in these cities? The time of universal University education has passed. The middle class is shrinking and has shrunk. For example, the guy I know who opted for HVAC trade school and started his own company, he didn't get the broad university education, but he's run his own business for 20 years, working with and for people of all socioeconomic statuses and races. University isn't for everyone, this idea that it is just isn't helpful.
kurthr 9y ago
Even with Ann Arbor (pop 110k) and its 40% university population it's probably good that Los Alamos (pop 12k) wasn't on there... great library though.
- ribfeast 9y ago
  Santa Fe would probably also land somewhere on here if the size limit were lowered.
hardlianotion 9y ago
Looks like I have to register to read, on my phone anyway. I think I am tending to be a little more careful about signing up to things on a whim than I used to be.
- epmaybe 9y ago
  Weird, I was able to read on mobile just fine.
flexie 9y ago
in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is the king. Move to McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX.
- posterboy 9y ago
  Someone, perhaps with handicapped depth perception, will already be there citing the bible. What then?
  - julianj 9y ago
    Engage in a lively, respectful, yet intelligent discussion about your agreements and disagreements and both come away better for it?
    - posterboy 9y ago
      Given the name of the city, I suppose the discussion would be quite biased.
barking 9y ago
From a quick glance at that map, the presence of a university skews results one way (N.C. to Boston), the presence of immigrants skews it the other (I'm assuming that's the explanation for the light blue along most of the Mexico border).
- krisdol 9y ago
  Spend more than a quick glance looking at the map then.
  - barking 9y ago
    Don't be an arse
2sk21 9y ago
The problem with using MSAs for this kind of analysis is that it ignores states like New Jersey. Some parts of new Jersey are very highly educated but do not fall within an MSA.
- jhbadger 9y ago
  And conversely the MSA methodology lumps uneducated areas together with educated parts. Including West Virginia in with the Washington DC MSA is crazy. Yes, some places in WV have become "bedroom communities" for DC workers, boosting their ranking, but other parts of the state are extremely poor and uneducated.
- jimmyrocks 9y ago
  All of NJ falls within an MSA. There are 7 that cover the state: New York, Allentown/Bethlehen, Trenton/Mercer, Philadelphia, Vineland, Atlantic City, and Ocean City/Cape May. The Trenton MSA gets a high ranking because of Princeton and the pharma companies nearby. Where Rutgers and J&J don't affect their score as much since their MSA (NYC) is so populated.
- losteverything 9y ago
  I wonder if there is a measurement for what i see in MSAs like NJ. The mix of wealthy and poor in the same town or same street even. So many people with so much money are significantly upgrading houses or outright purchasing for their children (or huge down payment) that neighborhoods have 1.5$m homes across from $125k homes. It used to be just about everyone in a neighborhood could afford to buy each other's house.
andybak 9y ago
As a Brit, I'm just astonished how many large US cities there are that I've never heard of.
- le-mark 9y ago
  Ha! When I lived in Germany, hanging out with German friends, the topic would sometimes go to poorly educated, dumb Americans who didn't even know Luxembourg was a country. I'd counter with, do you know the capital of Idaho? The point being geography, like a lot of things, is local.
  - iso-8859-1 9y ago
    I wanted to counter with "but the capital if Idaho is so much smaller than Luxembourg", then I ran the numbers and found out they have almost exactly the same fraction of the total population of USA or Europe, respectively. But that figure does include all of Russia.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    > I'd counter with, do you know the capital of Idaho? Do Americans? Half could not find New York State on a map of the United States. A third of the respondents [Americans aged 18 to 24] could not find Louisiana, and 48 percent couldn't locate Mississippi on a map of the United States. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/0502_060502_geography.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/0502_060502_...
- bluedino 9y ago
  Which ones? I wouldn't call a lot of those cities 'large'.
analog31 9y ago
If you want to attract the educated to a city, it's my hunch that you should try to make the city better for everybody in the lower tiers. Improve overall wages. Improve K-12 education, which was a huge factor in where my spouse and I chose to live. Improve how women are treated. Employers want to locate their businesses in places where they would want to live themselves. People are looking for a city where an educated, or non-educated spouse might be able to find a job. They want to live in a "nice" environment.
ranit 9y ago
Very interesting. There is a huge score gap between the first and the second. Does anybody have an inside view of what makes Ann Arbor such an exceptional place?
- TheCoelacanth 9y ago
  It's one of the smallest MSAs in the list with only 365k thousand people, which makes it much easier for it to be an outlier. They included the 150 largest MSAs in the US and Ann Arbor is the 146th largest. By comparison, number two is the sixth largest MSA with about 6 million people.
bjinwright 9y ago
This can't be right there are 7 colleges in Greensboro, NC and they are ranked 106.

28 points by tim_sw 9y ago

As someone from a place in the Rust Belt that's well in the triple digits of this 150-city ranking, I think I have a little insight. The problem isn't a lack of smart, ambitious kids. It's not bad schools. There are even multiple universities. The problem's that the smart, ambitious kids mostly choose to move elsewhere after HS or college. Even for the ones that want to stay, the local economy and job market isn't that great. We need to improve the level at which you attract/retain both educated people and well-paying jobs for them. How do we do that, given that both are at fairly low levels and it's something like a chicken-or-egg problem?

NTDF9 9y ago
As a person who's been about in those areas, I think part of the reason is the mass-delusion that education and sciences is somehow a bad thing. Far too many common folks out in the country think that education is not worth it, science is not worth learning, healthcare and public transportation is second-class. It shows in the way they live, the way they socialize, the way they vote. They'd rather spend money on Church than healthcare. They'd rather worry about their individual taxes than on improving schools and teaching critical thinking and sciences. The really ambitious/educated kids realize that it is a (apologies) shit-hole and get out asap.
- Pica_soO 9y ago
  Not a chance, that maybe, if you view family and community as a value and realize that all those people going to vanish in the hedonistic accid bath we labeled society will not contribute to either, its your right to withold support to this? Especially if those who turn theire back return to dissolve the livelihood of people without creating a worth-wile replacement? The fact that these communities basically with education create forces that harass and destroy them, makes the delay in backlash actually quite astounding.
  - NTDF9 9y ago
    I never once said that liberal coastal lifestyles are the best way to live. What I was getting at is that the more educated people feel stifled in communities that disregard rational thought process. People out there are good but they have very little proclivity to critical thinking and desire for educated neighbors. An example is that they'd rather segregate the poor out than actually work towards building an educated society and uplift the unfortunate.
    - Pica_soO 9y ago
      And in the citys, that happens? The schizophrenic bum below your appartment is uplifted by you? Or rather kept alive by some church/community driven support group? I grew up in a evangelical high religious environment, with some family members clearly having mental issues, that factored into religion (what you would consider extremism). Some of them viewed the city lifestyle and tech in particular as "parasites" leaching to religious communitys and countrys, as there society was not able to substain itself. I dislike that viewpoint, but disliking never made that piece of ugly truth go away. On the other side, these communities live longer and healthier by now- due to non-parasitic tech and as other countrys show, religious conservatism on its own, spirals into a eternal (every second gen) civil war, once all lands/ressources are used up. Could we agree upon, that both sides need one another- even though everyone in this thread has lovely family memorys.
      - TulliusCicero 9y ago
        > Some of them viewed the city lifestyle and tech in particular as "parasites" leaching to religious communitys and countrys, as there society was not able to substain itself. I dislike that viewpoint, but disliking never made that piece of ugly truth go away. Ugly truth? The major urban metros are the ones subsidizing the rural areas, just look at any state's map of each county's tax revenue generation vs spending. It's the rural, country areas that are mooching, the people living there just don't want to admit that the free market that they worship has abandoned them, because it turns out that effective modern commerce requires population density.
- FussyZeus 9y ago
  Speaking as another former rust-belter: none of this is untrue, but you're speaking as though this anti-authoritarian and anti-education attitude materialized from the ether, and it didn't. For decades the coastal cities have projected at every single turn in nearly every form of media (other than radio really, which is why it has such a strong presence in the rural areas) about how much better the coasts are, how much better the people are, and taken every single opportunity to thumb their nose at the social and community values that rural areas treasure. Combine that with the last 9 years or so, including the economic collapse and ensuing recovery that left any population center under several million basically to freeze and die, and the attitude of rural America is pretty easy to explain. You never gave a shit about what we had to say; why should we give a shit what you have to say now? That's not to say of course that I agree with this attitude. I'm just saying it gets really old to watch all my liberal friends scratching their heads like "Why don't they like us?" after you spent the last several decades pissing them off at every turn, like a college kid who just got their own apartment and doesn't have to live by Mom and Dad's rules anymore. And just like that sort of arrangement: the cities need the rural areas a hell of a lot more than the rural areas need the cities. So you know, keep that in mind.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    I want to preface by saying that I'm not arguing against the need for coastal cities to treat rural populations better. "I don't need you therefore I can mistreat you" is a shitty position that I would never take. > And just like that sort of arrangement: the cities need the rural areas a hell of a lot more than the rural areas need the cities. They may need the rural areas, but do they really need the rural population? I assume you're talking about farms, for food, fuel, etc, but from what I understand, most of that is produced by big farms, using mostly immigrant workers (legal and otherwise)[1]; not necessarily "big corp", but still, a relatively small percentage of the population[2]. In fact, most small scale farmers earn more money from other occupations[3]. It's not clear to me that cities actually need the non-immigrant rural population. [1] https://www.voanews.com/a/us-farmers-depend-on-illegal-immigrants-100541644/162082.html https://www.voanews.com/a/us-farmers-depend-on-illegal-immig... [2] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/big-farms-are-getting-bigger-and-most-small-farms-arent-really-farms-at-all/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/big-farms-are-getting-b... [3] http://farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2017/01/importance-non-farm-rural-economy-farm-household-income/ http://farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2017/01/importance-non-fa...
losvedir 9y ago
> The problem's that the smart, ambitious kids mostly choose to move elsewhere after HS or college. Even for the ones that want to stay, the local economy and job market isn't that great. Agreed. In fact, I think the entire thing driving the data here is population flow. I grew up in #148 (Porterville) and moved to #6 (Boston) in the list for school. And most of the people I know in Boston didn't themselves grow up there. A city could have the best education system in the world, but if it didn't have a thriving economy to keep its graduates it would still show up low on this list. On the other hand, a city with a crap education system can still hire in the best graduates of other schools if it has the jobs to draw them. I'm not even sure what data I'd be curious to see here. I was going to say it would be interesting to look at most educated cities considering only people born and raised there. But someone living in the same place all their life is so rare anymore, I'm not sure how meaningful that would be. Maybe just looking at people who graduated college there would be cool; after you graduate you're more likely to just stick around if you can. If that's the case, I guess the takeaway would be to try to establish strong universities in every city?
le-mark 9y ago
I'm asking myself, what's the problem here? The lack of bachelors degree holders working the counter at Starbucks in these cities? The time of universal University education has passed. The middle class is shrinking and has shrunk. For example, the guy I know who opted for HVAC trade school and started his own company, he didn't get the broad university education, but he's run his own business for 20 years, working with and for people of all socioeconomic statuses and races. University isn't for everyone, this idea that it is just isn't helpful.

kurthr 9y ago

Even with Ann Arbor (pop 110k) and its 40% university population it's probably good that Los Alamos (pop 12k) wasn't on there... great library though.

ribfeast 9y ago
Santa Fe would probably also land somewhere on here if the size limit were lowered.

hardlianotion 9y ago

Looks like I have to register to read, on my phone anyway. I think I am tending to be a little more careful about signing up to things on a whim than I used to be.

epmaybe 9y ago
Weird, I was able to read on mobile just fine.

flexie 9y ago

in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is the king. Move to McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX.

posterboy 9y ago
Someone, perhaps with handicapped depth perception, will already be there citing the bible. What then?
- julianj 9y ago
  Engage in a lively, respectful, yet intelligent discussion about your agreements and disagreements and both come away better for it?
  - posterboy 9y ago
    Given the name of the city, I suppose the discussion would be quite biased.

barking 9y ago

From a quick glance at that map, the presence of a university skews results one way (N.C. to Boston), the presence of immigrants skews it the other (I'm assuming that's the explanation for the light blue along most of the Mexico border).

krisdol 9y ago
Spend more than a quick glance looking at the map then.
- barking 9y ago
  Don't be an arse

2sk21 9y ago

The problem with using MSAs for this kind of analysis is that it ignores states like New Jersey. Some parts of new Jersey are very highly educated but do not fall within an MSA.

jhbadger 9y ago
And conversely the MSA methodology lumps uneducated areas together with educated parts. Including West Virginia in with the Washington DC MSA is crazy. Yes, some places in WV have become "bedroom communities" for DC workers, boosting their ranking, but other parts of the state are extremely poor and uneducated.
jimmyrocks 9y ago
All of NJ falls within an MSA. There are 7 that cover the state: New York, Allentown/Bethlehen, Trenton/Mercer, Philadelphia, Vineland, Atlantic City, and Ocean City/Cape May. The Trenton MSA gets a high ranking because of Princeton and the pharma companies nearby. Where Rutgers and J&J don't affect their score as much since their MSA (NYC) is so populated.
losteverything 9y ago
I wonder if there is a measurement for what i see in MSAs like NJ. The mix of wealthy and poor in the same town or same street even. So many people with so much money are significantly upgrading houses or outright purchasing for their children (or huge down payment) that neighborhoods have 1.5$m homes across from $125k homes. It used to be just about everyone in a neighborhood could afford to buy each other's house.

andybak 9y ago

As a Brit, I'm just astonished how many large US cities there are that I've never heard of.

le-mark 9y ago
Ha! When I lived in Germany, hanging out with German friends, the topic would sometimes go to poorly educated, dumb Americans who didn't even know Luxembourg was a country. I'd counter with, do you know the capital of Idaho? The point being geography, like a lot of things, is local.
- iso-8859-1 9y ago
  I wanted to counter with "but the capital if Idaho is so much smaller than Luxembourg", then I ran the numbers and found out they have almost exactly the same fraction of the total population of USA or Europe, respectively. But that figure does include all of Russia.
- icebraining 9y ago
  > I'd counter with, do you know the capital of Idaho? Do Americans? Half could not find New York State on a map of the United States. A third of the respondents [Americans aged 18 to 24] could not find Louisiana, and 48 percent couldn't locate Mississippi on a map of the United States. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/0502_060502_geography.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/0502_060502_...
bluedino 9y ago
Which ones? I wouldn't call a lot of those cities 'large'.

analog31 9y ago

If you want to attract the educated to a city, it's my hunch that you should try to make the city better for everybody in the lower tiers. Improve overall wages. Improve K-12 education, which was a huge factor in where my spouse and I chose to live. Improve how women are treated. Employers want to locate their businesses in places where they would want to live themselves. People are looking for a city where an educated, or non-educated spouse might be able to find a job. They want to live in a "nice" environment.

ranit 9y ago

Very interesting. There is a huge score gap between the first and the second. Does anybody have an inside view of what makes Ann Arbor such an exceptional place?

TheCoelacanth 9y ago
It's one of the smallest MSAs in the list with only 365k thousand people, which makes it much easier for it to be an outlier. They included the 150 largest MSAs in the US and Ann Arbor is the 146th largest. By comparison, number two is the sixth largest MSA with about 6 million people.

bjinwright 9y ago

This can't be right there are 7 colleges in Greensboro, NC and they are ranked 106.