With more than 97% of educators reporting learning loss among their students due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the personal-finance website WalletHub Tuesday released its report on 2021’s Most & Least Educated Cities in America. The Washington, D.C., Alexandria and Arlington, Va., complex came in as the third most educated place in the country.
Two more Virginia cities — Richmond at No. 37 and the Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News complex at No. 42 — also landed among the most educated American cities and complexes.
To determine where the most educated Americans are choosing to settle down, WalletHub compared the 150 largest U.S. metropolitan statistical areas across two dimensions — 1) educational attainment and 2) quality of education and attainment gap — and across 11 key metrics: 1) the share of adults aged 25 and older with a high school diploma or higher 2) the share of adults 25 and older with at least some college experience or an associate’s degree or higher 3) the share of adults 25 or older with a bachelor’s degree or higher 4) the share of adults 25 or older with a graduate or professional degree 5) the quality of the public school system 6) the average quality of universities 7) enrolled students in the top 1,009 universities per capita 8) the number of summer learning opportunities per capita 9) the racial education gap 10) the gender education gap and 11) the education quality index score, which is a comparative measure of the achievement gap between students from low-income families, as measured by participation in the free and reduced price lunch program, and their more advantaged peers.
According to WalletHub’s survey, the ten most educated cities in the country are 1) Ann Arbor 2) San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif. 3) Washington, D.C.-Arlington, Va.-Alexandria, Va. 4) San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, Calif. 5) Madison, Wisc. 6) Boston-Cambridge-Newton, Mass. 7) Durham-Chapel Hill, N.C. 8) Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Wash. 9) Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown, Texas 10) Provo-Orem, Utah.
Wallet’s 10 least educated of the 150 major cities in America were 141) Corpus Christi, Texas 142) Ocala, Fla. 143) Salinas, Calif. 144) Stockton, Calif. 145) Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton, N.C. 146) Modesto, Calif. 147) Bakersfield, Calif. 148) McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas 149) Brownsville-Harlingen, Texas 150) Visalia, Calif.
