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America's most and least educated cities

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Slo

Member
126) Scranton--Wilkes-Barre--Hazleton, PA


Expected.

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Matty77

Member
46. Isn't horrible. Don't get their state listings because Worcester is listed as MA/CT, is there an actual reason for that without having to read through the study.

Edit: okay I guess it's for metro area but still kind of doesnt make sense, other areas on that criteria list other cities/towns, Worcester is not a sprawl.
 
This list is stupid because it obviously favors urban areas or places with elite universities. There may be a lot of intelligent people born in Bakersfield but none of them stay there, they go to cities where the jobs are.
 

emag

Member
Weird methodology to use the top 150 MSAs for this. There are a half-dozen cities in the #2 MSA that are each individually more populous than the #1 MSA on this list. It's a similar situation for #3.

Of course, by considering individual cities the top of the list would be stacked with Northern California and Northern Virginia cities.
 
Bakersfield citizen here, can confirm this place is very uneducated. Growing up I didn't think it was too bad, but when I came back from four years of military service and traveling the world I noticed how bad it really was.
 
When it's all combined in one list it's hard to know when your city starts to shift into not so impressive territory. 62 is alright... Right?
 
Aww, poor central California.

You have no idea. The oil prices / drought have just destroyed many of those towns on the list.

I am finding out so many things as to why I hated living in Bakersfield lol. Like it all makes sense now, I got smarter while living in the Bay Area but got dumber when I was in Bakersfield.

Yeah, Bakersfield is not somewhere I'd recommend people moving too unless they have a great job lined up or need cheap housing close to the better parts of California.

As to everyone wondering why those Central California states are so uneducated, it's because most if not all of them have two major industries - agriculture and oil.

For the longest time, simply having two hands and an able body meant you could find high paying jobs, either as a welder or a technician or as manual labor, etc. We also have huge problems with Meth and our police force is unbelievably high on the list of unnecessary shootings.

Hell I still find people out of a job who go to a trade school only to find themselves out of the next job they trained for when the economy dips.

It's very cyclical and very bleak. Not to mention the heavy GOP influence on those cities. Read Mean Justice to see a snapshot of how these places came to be.
 

njean777

Member
I live in Colorado Springs, and it confuses me how it could be so high. The general population here is incredibly ignorant.

As the quote goes "never confuse education with intelligence". I know many people with degrees that do not have a lick of common sense, or are intelligent in anything other than the field they studied.
 

The Llama

Member
Philly at 48 doesn't surprise me, though I think we'll rise a few places over the next decade as more millenials stick around after college. It's an easy market for the city to tap into, given how many currently leave for NYC and DC. Just need to have jobs for them...
 
Errrr, I'm surprised to see LR/NLR/C on here at all. I've been gone from Arkansas for a while, but if that's a heavily degreed metropolitan area, I'm not sure what the hell it is they all studied. And the school system is really up and down.
 

Goro Majima

Kitty Genovese Member
McAllen, Tx is 78% Hispanic. Hopefully future generations will settle back in the city after getting an education.

Brownsville is similarly really Mexican.

Yeah I would say there's a strong correlation between the least educated places in Texas with the largest Hispanic populations. The Valley, El Paso, San Antonio, and Corpus Christi are all massive Hispanic population centers. If anything I'm reading this list thinking that there's a major problem with education in the Hispanic population that needs to be addressed. Although I also wonder if the mostly white cities of the panhandle and West Texas like Odessa/Midland, Lubbock, and Amarillo would rank just as low.

The entire golden triangle (Port Arthur-Beaumont-Orange) is probably one of the poorest, if not the poorest, part of the state despite the oil and gas jobs so I'm not surprised by the ranking. I used to dread traveling there for work because it felt like that whole area missed out on whatever prosperity Texas enjoyed. The Valley, by contrast and although the least educated, is really nice.

Killeen-Temple is that huge army base and all the fun parts you would have when you build a community based on catering to the needs of a rank and file soldier. Kinda reminds me of Lawton, OK.
 

GorillaJu

Member
California is a diverse state in terms of not only population but also economies. There are lots of less educated areas and primarily agricultural areas on top of cities like LA and San Diego. That said, Riverside should do better -_-
 
it's no mystery that central california is at the bottom of the list. this part of the state is red and even larger cities like fresno and modesto are run by republicans. so you can guess how good our education policy as been over the decades.

we do have one really good school district here in fresno but only because it has been confined to the rich part of town. we have the same racial and economic segregation problems that almost every large city has.
 

DopeToast

Banned
Probably because Columbus is more than just a college town

I had the exact same thought. I was happy enough to see the six Ohio metro areas at least all in the top 100. I'm not surprised about Ann Arbor, though. UM is a great school and Ann Arbor is a gorgeous town.
 
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