Forbes: Best/Worst-Educated US Cities

[Don Dresden]

America's Best- And Worst-Educated Cities

Joshua Zumbrun, 11.24.08, 06:00 PM EST

If you're looking for solid economies with low unemployment, follow the college degrees.

Over the course of a lifetime, the average American with a college degree out-earns someone who stops at high school by several hundred thousand dollars. That's why even $50,000-a-year educations are still "worth it" in an economic sense.

And what of cities that contain better-educated residents--are they better off as well?

Yes. A look at America's 10 best- and 10 worst-educated cities is a study in contrasts. The best-educated cities, as measured by the proportion of people older than 25 with bachelor's, master's, professional and doctoral degrees, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, are a collection of university, research and corporate havens with buoyant economies and low unemployment. Those at the other end of the scale tend to be--yet aren't always--just the opposite.

BEST
No. 1 Boulder, Colo.
No. 2 Ann Arbor, Mich.
No. 3 Washington, D.C.
No. 4 San Jose, Calif
No. 5 San Francisco, Calif
No. 6 Southern Connecticut
No. 7 Charlottesville, Va.
No. 8 Durham, N.C.
No. 9 Boston, Mass.
No. 10 Fort Collins, Colo

WORST
No. 1 Lake Havasu, Ariz
No. 2 Vineland, N.J.
No. 3 Merced, Calif.
No. 4 Visalia, Calif
No. 5 Houma, La.
No. 6 Yuma, Ariz.
No. 7 Bakersfield, Calif.
No. 8 Ottawa, Ill.
No. 9 Fort Smith, Ark.
No. 10 McAllen, Texas

[Dennis Ruhl]

My home turf of Alberta has a labor shortage and high wages yet has the lowest participation rate for post-secondary education in Canada. A kid can quit school and and make $20 an hour at a low paying job or $30 if he's lucky and end up working 12 hour days for weeks on end, most of it overtime.

I always wonder whether relating education to compensation is a meaningful measurement. Are we sure the correct correlation isn't smart people to compensation.