Educated cities list released by WalletHub

The personal finance website WalletHub has released its 2019’s Most & Least Educated Cities in America list. One metro area did fairly well, while another has some work to do.

“We looked at 150 metro areas,” said Jill Gonzalez with WalletHub. “Kansas City did pretty well, it ranked 33rd overall. Wichita did not do as well. It ranked 86th overall.”

WalletHub looked at 11 different metrics to reach its conclusions.

“Half of that is going to be simply educational attainment levels,” said Gonzalez. “We looked at how many people have a high school diploma, then Bachelor’s Degree, then graduate or professional degree. We saw the share of that in each city. We also looked at the quality of education when it comes to the quality of the public school system, also universities, summer learning opportunities and the attainment gap based on race and gender.”

The cities that were in the top 10 had something important in common.

“We found that usually when you do have a top-quality university nearby, it seems to really motivate people throughout their public school learning,” said Gonzalez.

Already having a large educated population may be a good way to draw in even more people with degrees.