What Are The Most Educated Cities In The U.S.? Top 100 Cities Ranked

Forbes named Atlanta the top educated city in the United States. Click here to read the full article.

In the U.S., people with higher levels of education tend to earn higher salaries. In fact, workers with bachelor’s degrees make $594 more than those with only a high school diploma, according to median usual weekly earnings data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

As a result, the most educated cities in the U.S. are primed to produce more innovation and tax revenue. This attracts companies looking for educated workers, which in turn leads to an even higher concentration of highly educated individuals. So, what are the most educated cities in the U.S.?

The cities topping our list do not just simply have the highest concentrations of college graduates; our ranking also considers high school dropout rates, graduate degree attainment rates, and gender and racial gaps in degree completion rates. Let’s take a look at some of the most educated cities the U.S. has to offer.

A Big-Picture Look at the U.S. Education System
• The average percentage of 25- to 64-year-olds with any postsecondary degree increased from 43% as of 2012 to 50% as of 2022.

The Most Educated Cities in the U.S.

1. Atlanta
• Bachelor’s completion rate for ages 25+: 59.28%
• Ages 25+ with graduate degrees: 26.68%
• Racial gap in bachelor’s degree attainment: -22.32%
Home to major colleges like Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology and Georgia State University, it’s no surprise that Atlanta is a highly educated city. In Georgia’s capital, nearly 60% (59.28%) of residents hold bachelor’s degrees, while 26.68% have graduate degrees. Atlanta does report a wide racial gap in bachelor’s degree attainment: -22.32%.

Methodology

To determine the most educated cities, Forbes Education gathered several education metrics for the 100 largest U.S. cities by population from the Census Bureau’s 2021 American Communities Survey.

These metrics included the high school dropout rate, which shows the percentage of adults age 18 and older without a high school diploma; the percentage of adults age 25 and older with some college, but no degree; the undergraduate college completion rate, which shows the percentage of adults age 25 and older without a bachelor’s degree or higher; and the percentage of adults age 25 and older with an advanced degree.

We also accounted for educational equity with two other lower-weighted metrics, the racial college completion gap, and the gender college completion gap. The racial gap was determined by subtracting the college completion rate for all students from the college completion rate for only white students, to show which states non-white students faced the biggest obstacles.

The gender gap was determined by taking the absolute value of the difference between male and female graduation rates in each city; this method allowed us to measure the gender gap in each city regardless of which gender it favored.