America's Most-Educated Cities

A few surprises on this list for me...Oakland, Atlanta, and Pittsburgh are surprises. And Salt Lake City not being on here is surprising as well.

What's proper about drawing lines through a city and saying that only people on one side of the line lives in the city proper?

Oakland is not that surprising when you consider it is sandwiched between Berkeley (famous elite college town), San Jose (silicon valley), and San Francisco (the smuggiest city in America). If you go a little bit farther north to Richmond, CA and San Pablo you might start to have trouble finding college degrees, but around Oakland there are plenty.
Atlanta is also not at all surprising if you know how big the technology sector is there.
Pittsburgh is the one on the list that surprised me a little bit, but they are at the very bottom of the list, and as Scuadrado pointed out there are a bunch of smaller towns and cities that don't make it because they failed to make the population cut-off. 34.4% is actually well below the national average in the USA.

^but most of those educated people live in suburbs and not in cities.

oakland is pure ghetto...was very surprising to me...and jersey city? wtf...thought that was one big ghetto

::shrug:: I used to live between Richmond and San Pablo. Oakland didn't surprise me. Though, again, they are actually below the national average. Most educated people in the United States do not live in the big cities- other than the first 10 or so on this list.

The national average is only 30% for a 4-year degree. These cities are all above. And the trend is the OPPOSITE of what you say, kal. The educated are moving INTO the cities proper. The most vibrant downtowns are filled with the educated. Most of these cities have a strong institutional reason for so many educated in-city. Austin, Seattle, Minneapolis, Raleigh, Lexington all have big state research universities. Any city with grad schools is going to have a higher number, thus DC, Atlanta, Pittsburgh. The one that surprised me the most is Jersey City, but New Jersey has a long track record of having a really good thing going and not telling anyone about it.

Jersey City is a hotbed for young graduates who don't want to live in Manhattan. Just as close to downtown as Brooklyn.

The Oakland hills are full of wealthy professionals, and the rest is being taken over by over-educated hipsters priced out of San Francisco and Berkeley.

beet: I didn't say educated people were moving away from cities. I said that they don't live in cities. And that's still generally true, even if the current trend is the opposite of what has been happening for most of the past century. I may have been wrong about the average for degrees- maybe I was thinking of all degrees including 2 year degrees.

Having been to Pittsburgh I was certain it would be on the list. I'm just surprised it wasn't higher.

in pittsburgh they stop at the end of ramps, so they can't be that smart LOL

In Saudi Arabia they stop in the middle of them and start driving in reverse.

There's a booming technology business there. However, even being Texan, I wouldn't have thought it was one of the most-educated cities!

Sigh. My mental map of the USA has a big blob labeled "Dallas / Fort Worth Metroplex", so I didn't think to try Plano. And it has another big blob labeled "San Francisco Bay Area", so I didn't think to try Oakland or San Jose. Stupid sprawling cities with named subdivisions.

San Jose is older and larger than San Francisco, so I wouldn't call it a suburb. They are separate cities in the Bay Area. My problem was Minnesota. I tried Minneapolis but didn't think about trying St. Paul.

Hah, two colorado cities on here, Colorado rocks.

Apparently some of your cookies crumbled as there is only one Colorado city on the list now. :)

I have no problem with my comment from a month ago being deleted, just wish the same standard would be applied to comments from all users.

What was your comment? I won't comment on it.

If all comments from all users were deleted there wouldn't be any comments.

don't remember

Malbaby: is that what I said?

I can't help but notice that there's only US cities in this "America's smartest cities" quizz. I can't believe the US outnumbers the whole continent on this matter.

:D

Here we go again.

I wasn't sure whether this quiz was about the USA or all of America, so I checked the comments. Thanks for warning me, Miqueas!

Huh. Newark is on the Lowest Educated Cities quiz, and Jersey City is on this one?

lets go my state of NC with 3 on the board,

Yep. I immediately put the cities in the Research Triangle first. I visited Raleigh for business a few months ago. I really liked it. Pretty nice area there.

Why?

Wait, so you're telling me Canada is in America?! This changes everything!

Probably one of those Europeans who were taught that "America" was the continent and The United States was the country. Understandable mistake if that is the case.

buck, assuming that some Europeans are taught that America was the continent and the USA was the country is wrong. Most countries in Europe don't even learn about the USA since it's on the other side of the ocean, so they learn about Eurasian History etc. Europeans only get taught about America during their last *years* at school, unless you're one of the lucky people who get taught by an American teacher and even in Canada, I didn't get taught about America (it was mentioned) but I had to learn about it myself.

The mistake isn't on Europe's part...

Shocked that Columbus is not on this list. It's college town with a huge student body and state capital of a large population state. So you end up with a large number of college graduates living there 1) getting graduate degrees, 2) not wanting to leave the college life 3) working for the state. Much like St. Paul, Minneapolis and Austin are and Madison would be if it was a little bit larger.

Too US-centric!!!!

Well done Plano!

Interesting that Washington, being 49% black and 43% white, still ranks third highest here.

Got 13 from INDIA, Through never heard of Lexington, Plano, Chandler.

I used to live in Allen, which is right next to plano, and I never knew it was the 2nd most educaded...

You should also accept Minneapolis as St. Paul (they're basically the same city)