San Jose, California, ranked number two in the nation overall as the second-most educated city in the United States. Their main claim to fame is the tie with Ann Arbor, and others, for the highest percentage of professional or graduate degrees among their population.
They also ranked as one of the top five cities with the highest percentage of bachelor degrees in the country. While they didn’t rank in the top five for high school diplomas, we know that they have a lot of high school grads living there as well with such high percentages of bachelor’s and graduate degrees.
Provo, Utah, is overall number 13 in the most educated cities in the United States, but it also ranked in the top five for population with the highest percentage of high school diplomas and in the highest percentage of associate’s degrees or college experience.
Provo is not home to a university, and is a smaller city south of Salt Lake, but it is a very nice and beautiful city that is home to one of the highest populations of educated people over the age of 25 in the United States.
Coming in at just a couple of ranking spots lower than their neighbor Colorado Springs, Denver, Colorado, comes in at number 14 overall in the most educated cities in the United States.
Denver is also home to quite a few universities. They didn’t rank in any of the specific categories studied by WalletHub, but they are still ranked very high overall.
However, they shouldn’t be so quick to boast because they were also ranked in the top five of largest racial education gaps favoring white people. This means that minorities have a harder time getting an education in Trenton. What’s the point of having high quality universities if it’s not attainable for everyone?
San Bernardino, California, is next on the list of the least educated cities in the United States. They are also on the list of the worst college towns in the United States as well.
They didn’t rank in anything specifically low for any of the categories WalletHub studied, but overall, their population is just not educated. Given that they are one of the worst college towns as well, their educational system must not be up to par with what it should be.
Corpus Christi, Texas, almost made it to the bottom 10 on the list of 150 metropolitan areas, but missed it by just a hair.
They didn’t rank in anything specifically negative, but they did gain some extra credit from the researchers at WalletHub for having a large racial education gap that favors Black people. This means that the Black people in this city are much more educated than the majority of white people in this city, which is a good thing because this isn’t the case in other parts of the United States.
The least educated city in the United States as of 2020 is the Visalia, California, metropolitan area. They ranked dead last, overall, of the 150 metro areas studied, and also ranked last for the lowest percentage of bachelor’s degrees and professional or graduate degrees.
They also were in the bottom five for lowest percentage of high school diplomas and of associate’s degrees or college experience. They also have a large racial education gap that favors Black people, meaning the Black population in Visalia is more educated than the white population in Visalia, which gave them extra credit points in the WalletHub scoring system, but it didn’t make up for the lack of overall education in Visalia.
