Amid concerns about the economy, opinions about education in U.S. are also shifting. Rising college costs, the student loan crisis and now, the rise of artificial intelligence have made people take a second look at higher education.
However, higher levels of education do tend to go hand-in-hand with higher salaries and more robust tax bases, according to WalletHub. With growing economic insecurity in the U.S., education is still something people can turn to help build a stable future.
“Higher education doesn’t guarantee better financial opportunities in the future, but it certainly correlates with it,” said WalletHub analyst Chris Lupo. “The most educated cities provide good learning opportunities from childhood all the way through the graduate level. In addition to overall education, it’s also important to look at how well cities promote educational equality when it comes to race and gender.”
This week WalletHub released a report on the most educated cities in the nation. It may come as a surprise that there isn’t actually much overlap with the top five wealthiest cities in the U.S., as reported by Condé Nast Traveler earlier this year: New York, N.Y.; San Francisco, Calif.; Los Angeles, Calif.; Chicago, Ill., and Houston, Texas.
“To determine where the most educated Americans are putting their degrees to work, WalletHub compared the 150 largest metropolitan statistical areas, or MSAs, across 11 key metrics,” said the personal finance website. “Our data set ranges from the share of adults aged 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree or higher to the quality of the public-school system to the gender education gap.”
Here are the top 10 most educated metro areas in the U.S., per the analysis:
1. Ann Arbor, Mich.
2. Durham-Chapel Hill, N.C.
3. Madison, Wisc.
4. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif.
5. Washington D.C., -Arlington-Alexandria, Va.
6. Raleigh-Cary, N.C.
7. San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, Calif.
8. Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown, Texas
9. Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Wash.
10. Boston-Cambridge, Mass.-Newton, N.H.
Here are the five least educated metro areas in the country, based on the WalletHub research: Visalia, Calif.; Brownsville-Harlingen, Texas; McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas; Bakersfield, Calif., and Modesto, Calif.