A new report from WalletHub details the nation’s most and least educated cities. The list compared the 150 largest metropolitan areas across several metrics, including those with adults 25 and older with at least a bachelor’s degree, quality of the public school system, and the size of educational gaps between genders, WalletHub said. Those ranked among the country’s most educated included Ann Arbor, Michigan; Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina; and San Jose, Sunnyvale, and Santa Clara, California.
Those listed among the nation’s least-educated cities included Visalia, California; McAllen, Edinburg, and Mission, Texas; and Brownsville and Harlingen, Texas. The California cities of Bakersfield, Modesto, Salinas, Fresno, and Stockton were also listed.
“Higher education doesn’t guarantee better financial opportunities in the future, but it certainly correlates with it,” WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo said in the report. “The most educated cities provide good learning opportunities from childhood all the way through the graduate level. In addition to overall education, it’s also important to look at how well cities promote educational equality when it comes to race and gender.”
According to the report, Ann Arbor is the most educated metro area in the United States, as over 96% of adults aged 25 and older have at least a high school diploma, nearly 59% hold a bachelor’s degree, and nearly 32% have an advanced degree.
Areas with the lowest percentage of associate’s degree holders or college-experienced adults include McAllen, Edinburg, and Mission, Texas; Brownsville and Harlingen, Texas; and Visalia, California.
California not only has some of the worst education rates in the nation, but one county, Los Angeles, leads the country in population loss. 53,000 residents moved out of the county in one year.
According to U.S. Census data, 53,421 people left the city between July 1, 2024, and July 1, 2025. Since 2020, the city’s population has dropped from nearly 10 million residents to about 9.7 million.
