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So what you're telling me, then, is that the counties surrounding Pittsburgh are not only less well educated but also grayer than Allegheny County. Do I have that right?
Pretty much. The city of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County are where most of the action is. The only exception is with the energy industry, where most of the action is out on the fringes.
How is that surprising? Austin is the opposite of your Pittsburgh example. There is very little blue collar history prior to recent years with Samsung, Tesla, etc coming in. The economy traditionally is tech, government, and education, most of which requires college degrees.
True...at times the recent influx of transplants made me forgot about the fact that Austin always had relative higher educational attainment.
The poster isn’t from SF. He moved to Chicago and is really unhappy. He pops up to post disgruntled comments about it whenever he can find a reason to.
Yeah I think Chicago sucks. But who cares? Whether I am a great lover of Chicago or not the number of people with college or advanced degrees doesn't change. I don't--you'll just have to believe me--control that. Chicago isn't a comparatively less educated city or metro because I don't like it. Chicago is a comparatively less educated city and metro because it has fewer people with college degrees.
This has everything to do with the way the cities/neighborhoods/counties are divided in this study. As someone who has lived in many different cities and States, but is from Chicago, this HEAVILY "favors" Chicago. Lakeview/Lincoln Park PUMA, but then they have others like Back Bay/Beacon Hill/Charlestown/East Boston? This has everything to do with groupings. As I said upthread, Chicago's North Side and Northshore suburbs are as educated as anywhere you'll find in other major metros. But, this data doesn't reflect the real comps in the cities and metros I'm familiar with.
They break out Cook county, all the way down to Northfield/New Trier Township. Huh? That one of literally 100+ districts/areas.
It makes more sense to look at data by town/village, city, county. Which, again, shows Chicago solidly in the middle. Which is why everyone disagreed with you.
As for the data itself, I spot checked some of the county read-outs using census data. It's so far off, that I wonder if we are interpreting this wrong. E.g the Middlesex County PUMA (a completely random pairing of towns, by the way) - Watertown, Arlington, Belmont, Winchester - The lowest % of the group with bachelor's degree or higher is Watertown at 66%, with the others all 70-75%+. How do you explain 32% per the data? I mean, there are very, very few towns in the Boston MSA that are that low in general outside of the legacy industrial cities. The data for Northfield/New Trier is also wildly inaccurate, with all of the towns at 70%+.
1 in every 4 adults in the DC and SJ UAs have a graduate degree.
Urban Areas(UA) by Adults With a Graduate Degree, 2020:
Washington DC 27.7%
San Jose 26.4%
Boston 22.6%
San Francisco 21.3%
Raleigh 20.3%
Baltimore 18.9%
Austin 17.8%
Rochester 17.7%
Seattle 17.7%
New York 17.5%
Portland 16.3%
Atlanta 16.2%
St. Louis 16.2%
Minneapolis 16.1%
Pittsburgh 16.1%
Columbus 16.0%
Denver 16.0%
Philadelphia 16.0%
Chicago 15.9%
Richmond 15.6%
Nashville 15.4%
San Diego 15.4%
Charlotte 15.3%
Buffalo 15.0%
Birmingham 14.6%
Kansas City 14.5%
Cincinnati 14.3%
Indianapolis 14.1%
Tucson 14.0%
Cleveland 13.9%
Detroit 13.3%
Salt Lake City 13.0%
Milwaukee 12.9%
Providence 12.9%
Dallas 12.8%
Houston 12.7%
Orlando 12.6%
Virginia Beach 12.6%
Miami 12.5%
Grand Rapids 12.4%
Phoenix 12.3%
Los Angeles 12.1%
Memphis 12.1%
New Orleans 12.1%
Sacramento 11.7%
Tampa 11.5%
Oklahoma City 11.3%
Jacksonville 10.7%
San Antonio 10.6%
Tulsa 10.4%
Fresno 8.7%
Riverside 7.4%
data.census.gov
I input Grand Rapids, Las Vegas, and Louisville but no figures showed up.
Last edited by 18Montclair; 08-31-2022 at 09:02 AM..
This has everything to do with the way the cities/neighborhoods/counties are divided in this study. As someone who has lived in many different cities and States, but is from Chicago, this HEAVILY "favors" Chicago. Lakeview/Lincoln Park PUMA, but then they have others like Back Bay/Beacon Hill/Charlestown/East Boston? This has everything to do with groupings. As I said upthread, Chicago's North Side and Northshore suburbs are as educated as anywhere you'll find in other major metros. But, this data doesn't reflect the real comps in the cities and metros I'm familiar with.
They break out Cook county, all the way down to Northfield/New Trier Township. Huh? That one of literally 100+ districts/areas.
It makes more sense to look at data by town/village, city, county. Which, again, shows Chicago solidly in the middle. Which is why everyone disagreed with you.
As for the data itself, I spot checked some of the county read-outs using census data. It's so far off, that I wonder if we are interpreting this wrong. E.g the Middlesex County PUMA (a completely random pairing of towns, by the way) - Watertown, Arlington, Belmont, Winchester - The lowest % of the group with bachelor's degree or higher is Watertown at 66%, with the others all 70-75%+. How do you explain 32% per the data? I mean, there are very, very few towns in the Boston MSA that are that low in general outside of the legacy industrial cities. The data for Northfield/New Trier is also wildly inaccurate, with all of the towns at 70%+.
PUMAs themselves are actually define by Census Bureau.
My argument against the OP's data? Sure, you got two small areas of Chicago with VERY educated people. But where is the rest of Chicago (even within just the city limit)? This is like saying NYC should ranked even higher as it actually has the most PUMAs on that list.
At the end of the day, those relatively less well off African-Americans in South Side or West Side are still people from Chicago and you cannot denied that...
This has everything to do with the way the cities/neighborhoods/counties are divided in this study. As someone who has lived in many different cities and States, but is from Chicago, this HEAVILY "favors" Chicago. Lakeview/Lincoln Park PUMA, but then they have others like Back Bay/Beacon Hill/Charlestown/East Boston? This has everything to do with groupings. As I said upthread, Chicago's North Side and Northshore suburbs are as educated as anywhere you'll find in other major metros. But, this data doesn't reflect the real comps in the cities and metros I'm familiar with.
They break out Cook county, all the way down to Northfield/New Trier Township. Huh? That one of literally 100+ districts/areas.
It makes more sense to look at data by town/village, city, county. Which, again, shows Chicago solidly in the middle. Which is why everyone disagreed with you.
As for the data itself, I spot checked some of the county read-outs using census data. It's so far off, that I wonder if we are interpreting this wrong. E.g the Middlesex County PUMA (a completely random pairing of towns, by the way) - Watertown, Arlington, Belmont, Winchester - The lowest % of the group with bachelor's degree or higher is Watertown at 66%, with the others all 70-75%+. How do you explain 32% per the data? I mean, there are very, very few towns in the Boston MSA that are that low in general outside of the legacy industrial cities. The data for Northfield/New Trier is also wildly inaccurate, with all of the towns at 70%+.
I didn't create the list or overly scrutinize the data but it shows anyone can conduct a study with arbitrary parameters that elevates basically whatever you want. However, no one should be able to find any data that has Chicago above NYC, D.C. ,Boston ,S.F., Seattle etc. in any capacity if one is to believe Foreigncrunch and like minded haters.
People do this constantly for San Francisco to be place it above everywhere else in the country with any and every metric imaginable.
For the 2nd quarter of 2022 Chicago lead the nation in office absorption by a county mile. There was 2.4 mil sq. ft. occupied compared to #2 Dallas which had 900,000. Nobody created a discussion saying "Chicago is the best destination for corporations in the U.S." Now how many years exactly would it take Ann Arbor to build-out 2.4 million square feet of office space? Being the best destination for people with degrees I'd guess rather quickly no?
PUMAs themselves are actually define by Census Bureau.
My argument against the OP's data? Sure, you got two small areas of Chicago with VERY educated people. But where is the rest of Chicago (even within just the city limit)? This is like saying NYC should ranked even higher as it actually has the most PUMAs on that list.
At the end of the day, those relatively less well off African-Americans in South Side or West Side are still people from Chicago and you cannot denied that...
Funny, this is the same logic people use to defend Chicago against being a war-zone and it never succeeds. So Chicago isn't educated because so much of the city isn't. Then Chicago isn't very violent because so much of the city isn't. People are going to have to be logically consistent.
I agree with your sentiments but just like you can't ignore the poorer, uneducated parts of the city, you can't ignore the extremely educated parts either. Saying there's two small parts of Chicago that's very educated is highly exaggerated. Lincoln Park, Lakeview, the Near-West Side, Near-North, Loop/South Loop are all highly educated areas. 51% of Hyde Park's residents have graduate degrees. Chicago went from 33% with 4-year degrees in in 2010 to 41% in 2022. That is significant. There's also a Stanford study that says CPS is "the fastest improving district" in the country. Chicago is taking measures to address the gaps.
More reasons a Wallet-Hub list that compares major cities to mid-sized cities and college towns is ridiculous on it's face.
Houston is always going to lower on that list and its not a bad thing.
Houston, more than any other city besides maybe Vegas, has a lot of jobs that pay well that dont require a higher education. Its the nature of a blue collar city.
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