Neat data, but it seems like starting the coloring at 40% is really high.
I’m curious what this would look like if they counted counties with 25% and above degree requirements.
not really, that’s roughly the percentage for the entire population of the country.
Exactly. The less educated population matters just as much as the more educated. Those people are not represented in this map.
here’s all the counties by education attainment. high school, 4-year college, graduate/professional degree.
source of the visuals:
www.smartick.com/data/visualizing-the-most-and-least-educated-counties-in-america/
using data from the census:
https://www.census.gov/data/developers/data-sets/acs-5year.html
This is somewhat a “people live in cities” graph, but not as stark of one I expected. Not all big cities are so educated, plus there are a lot of rural places that draw in a surprising number of people with advanced degrees.
Still, I’m amused that Interstate 29 in specific lights up like a string of Christmas lights.
Based on the states I know, some of the surprising rural areas are where state universities are.
Oklahoma only has 1 county lit up, and it’s where a state university is, OSU. But it’s ranked lower nationally than OU (#196 vs #132). Both are in otherwise small towns, basically overrun by their respective colleges. Anecdotally, Norman (OU) is known to have nothing in town, but Stillwater (OSU) has it’s own subculture and town pride.
I’m curious how many of these counties just contain college towns vs how many actually might attract highly educated people.
Yeah. It is interesting that Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Miami aren’t on here while Salt Lake City, Denver, and Atlanta are very visible.
Denver vs Vegas and LA isn’t surprising. Cities built on industries that don’t require education won’t be massively educated
Yeah, interesting that Colorado has the highest density of 60+% is it all expats of the Midwest who don’t want to move too far away?
Actually because it’s in percentages it could be small towns run by one large industry that requires degrees.
Whycome the south doesn’t has orange boxes? Is we stupid?
TN is Williamson County. Which is basically the Nashville suburbs and/or bougie town.
Also, not a whole lot of actual locals living there, ask me how I know.
One can see the impact of the Yellowstone national park quite clearly.
Same with Los Alamos Labs in NM. That orange spot has more PhDs per Capita than anywhere else in the states.
I want to see the map with 20-30 and 30-40 too!
