Three Metro Regions in CT Are Among Top 30 Most Educated in the US

Three Connecticut metropolitan areas are among the top 30 “most educated cities in America,” according to a new analysis.  The Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk area ranked #12 in the nation, narrowly missing the top 10.  Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford placed 22^nd, and New Haven-Milford ranked 29^th in the ranking developed by the financial website WalletHub. The Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk region ranked fourth in the nation for the highest percentage of individuals who have earned Bachelor’s degrees and fifth in the percentage of “graduate or professional degree holders,” according to the analysis.  The New Haven area ranked second in the nation in the quality of universities.

Overall, the top 10 most educated cities were Ann Arbor, Washington DC, San Jose, Durham, Madison, Boston, Provo, San Francisco, Austin and Tallahassee, according to the analysis.

To identify the most and least educated cities in America, WalletHub’s analysts compared the 150 most populated U.S. metropolitan statistical areas, or MSAs, across two key dimensions, including “Educational Attainment” and “Quality of Education & Attainment Gap.”  Data used to create the overall ranking were collected from the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, GreatSchools.org and U.S. News & World Report.

The Ann Arbor, MI, metro area has the highest share of bachelor’s degree holders aged 25 and older, 52.7 percent, which is 3.8 times higher than in Visalia-Porterville, CA, the metro area with the lowest at 13.8 percent.

Economic Policy Institute analysts point out that one way to strengthen an economy is to attract well-paying employers “by investing in education and increasing the number of well-educated workers.” In states where workers have the least schooling, for instance, the median wage is $15 an hour compared with $19 to $20 an hour in states where 40 percent or more of the working population hold a bachelor’s degree or higher.

A similar study by WalletHub earlier this year, comparing states, ranked Connecticut as having the fourth highest educated state population, just behind Maryland, Massachusetts and Colorado.