San Francisco Tops List Of Cities With Most College Degrees (CHART)

Recent John Carrol University graduate Rob Pitingolo was interested in finding out the "educational attainment density" (read: number of college degree-holders) in American cities. So he gathered the data and charted it -- and what he found is visually revealing if not surprising. San Francisco leads the pack by a considerable margin with more than 7,000 degrees per square mile, followed by New York, Boston and Washington, D.C.

Pitingolo lays out the data and more on his blog Extraordinary Observations.

What's your take on this chart? Let us know in the comments section.

Comments

[Lefty83]

11:20 PM on 06/11/2010

Yes a liberal city! Suck on that neocons!

[juna]

10:52 PM on 07/16/2010

Just goes to show - liberals are smarter. MUCH smarter, actually.

[citizen of the universe]

10:51 PM on 06/11/2010

Reading some of the below comments, why all the hating on SF? I have loved San Francisco since my first visit at 8 years old. It's a forward thinking city and that's what makes it smart.

[missouriwatcher]

06:20 PM on 06/11/2010

Looks like a lot of college grads commenting here. lol

No, but really, it is interesting noting that the South fares very poorly overall in the city lineup.

[sunday33]

11:26 PM on 06/03/2010

It's also the city with the most insane people on the planet.

Nancy Pelosi says it all

[imusintheevening]

12:49 PM on 06/10/2010

wellfuckyouverymuch - stay away!

[CaliGrown78]

01:52 PM on 06/11/2010

lol you tell em, don't be roasting my city!!

[pkafin]

01:26 PM on 06/10/2010

Smart insane benevolent people armed with ideas, gadgets, and money make for a great city to live in.

[Epotheros]

06:22 PM on 06/03/2010

This seems to be a pretty flawed survey. First of all, it appears to only use very large cities with a population of over 500,000. This was made obvious when Boulder, CO was not on the list when it won an honor from Forbes of having the most college degrees per population. Also Boulder is a decent sized city of nearly 100,000. Second, the method he is using it the amount of degrees per square mile. This being noted, the more densely populated cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles rank very high on the list. I know this guy wanted to try and find the attainment density, but doing it by square mile is misleading Instead he should have done it by percent of population per square mile. So the data represented in the chart should be taken with a grain of salt.

[jfair80]

12:37 PM on 06/04/2010

Excellent analysis

[asgspifs]

03:19 PM on 06/04/2010

Good critical analysis, however, your criticism seems biased just because this study didn't include Boulder, CO. Let me guess, you live in Boulder (or used to)?
Not including cities below a certain size is not a "flaw" - it's a "limitation" - probably a practical one since including all cities at least the size of Boulder would take a long time to complete and would be difficult to share the results on a single graph.

You are right that a better metric would be "% of population per sq. mile" because they way it is now, cities with denser populations will necessarily score higher than more spread out cities. To be more fair, they should also normalize the results by the number of colleges in a city.

However, even with flaws and limitations, the results are still worth more than a "grain of salt." And, I would bet that improving the study as you suggest would not change the overall trend that much. You may see San Fransisco and New York drop to # 3 or 5, below Boston and/or Washington, but I'd bet that the top and bottom halves of that chart would not change much.

I also think it is striking to compare the cities on the top half (with a more college educated populace) to cities with more liberal, progressive minded people and ideas, and contrast that to cities on the bottom half (with a less college educated populace) that tend to be more conservative places.

[IDIOTA]

05:48 PM on 06/03/2010

This is not surprising given that two gold rushes, the last one a technological one, began in the Bay Area.

[bkrider9]

05:26 PM on 06/03/2010

Former Confederate states rank very low, another confirmation that the practice of slavery and racism ultimately proved to be great economic disadvantages.

[Craig Bowers]

12:45 PM on 06/11/2010

The point of irony here would be West Virgina that became seceded from Virgina due to slavery/The Civil Way.

[Craig Bowers]

12:45 PM on 06/11/2010

(sorry for typo!)

[dawacu]

04:29 PM on 06/03/2010

The top cities also tend to be the most densely populated cities in general and doesn't mention anything that might effect the numbers (like the presence of universities in the area). In short, this chart doesn't tell you much.

[Atac]

10:37 AM on 06/03/2010

I've heard that Seattle is the most educated city per capita. San Francisco is a much denser city.

[santiago sherwood]

02:01 PM on 06/03/2010

how to lie with stats, Portland and Seattle are not as densely populated as SF , NYC, Etc. If they wanted to produce a more reasonable number. It should be percentage of Adults or Registered voters.

Personally Liberals degrees from Online Colleges don't count either.

[MBA is King]

04:38 AM on 06/03/2010

College. It's the great gift you can give your kids. Make sure they get at least 10 degrees.

[elan4444]

03:12 AM on 06/03/2010

If you are from California, I just saw an ad on this site paid for by the electric companies urging a "yes" vote on prop. 16. Vote NO on this measure, it's funded solely by the electric company!! It will deny cities their right to purchase electricity for residents at lower rates. They were called to account today in the LA Times about their deceptive ads. NO on 16!

[TheRLeePost]

07:32 PM on 06/02/2010

A very poor comparison process. Did the author get any analysis training in college? The density of the city has a large effect here which isn't acknowledged. Jacksonville is geographically one of the largest cities in the country, and as you can see is third from the bottom, largely because of it.

And too, using city statistics long ago ceased to be relevant as metropolitan areas became clusters of incorporated and unincorporated towns.

-RLee
http://therleepost.blogspot.com

[MBA is King]

04:39 AM on 06/03/2010

The article does state that the author did go to college.

Isn't that assurance enough?

www.mbaunderground.blogspot.com

[IUAlumna]

03:35 PM on 06/02/2010

I bet my city has a higher ratio than San Francisco, but it's not included in the list because it's not big enough. If you want to live around people with college degrees, go to the source: a college town. The only drawback is that it's harder to find a job, both because there are fewer jobs available and because the competition is fierce. I worked briefly as an assistant for a professor. I have a masters, and his other assistant had a bachelors from Berkeley and a masters from the University of Chicago. We were changing toner and making travel arrangements. (I left for a research position that paid less, but when the phone rang it was for me, not my boss.)

[bkrider9]

05:32 PM on 06/03/2010

Professors who misuse valuable talent ought to be reprimanded and told to mend their ways or forfeit their funds for hiring assistants. Simple as that. Senior professors can be as outrageous as any feudal lord when it comes to denigrating and exploiting subordinates. Time for that system to be overthrown once and for all, especially when we realize that many of the most powerful ideas are coming from the younger scholars, not the old successful tenured geezers. We know this is true in the hard sciences, and there is growing evidence of the same in the social sciences and humanities. In the arts it's almost always been true, especially in the last hundred years.

[DirectProf]

12:45 PM on 06/02/2010

His blog shows a difference when it's at the county level, which is, I suspect, a more accurate indicator since it's a more regional approach. Cleveland, for example, is fairly low in the city list (40th), but Cuyahoga County (of which Cleveland is the seat) does much better (12th). That's cause many of the educated people in the region have moved out of the city core to a large extent and into the inner suburbs.

Also, Washington, DC, blows everyone else away when looked at regionally, as I would suppose since employment in the Federal government all but requires a college degree.

Interesting, but I think other info may be needed before people start crowing about their town. ;)

[Aabby]

10:27 AM on 06/02/2010

NYC a close second! :-)