community’s collective brainpower
Austin blogs are abuzz today with the release of a study that says Austin is the third best-educated city in the US. I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that Austin follows Seattle and San Fran in the rankings, considering UT-Austin was for many years the largest college campus in the country. (It’s now the fifth largest.) However, my hometown of Tulsa checks in as the 19th best-educated city, ahead of Columbus, which is home to The Ohio State University. I guess megacampuses can only go so far in raising the collective intelligence of a city, but Minneapolis, with the University of Minnesota, is ranked fifth.
Whenever I read these studies, I’m a little surprised to see really big cities fall at the bottom of the list. It’s not surprising to see Philadelphia come in at number 50 (out of 53). When I lived there, I was confronted with unimaginable stupidity on a daily basis, but I would attribute the low ranking to the white flight that led most of the middle-and-upper class to the suburbs, so much of the city is full of poor neighborhoods and undereducated citizens. Still, New York City comes it at 32, Los Angeles at 41, and Chicago at 39. These cities seem to be full of educated professionals living in the city limits. Perhaps immigration could account for the lower percentages of college and high-school grads.
