Local News

Boston area squeaked into top 10 of most educated cities, per WalletHub

The city didn’t get first place — how do you like them apples?

Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe, file

July 12, 2025

1 minute to read

Boston made it on a list of the most educated cities in the nation, which likely doesn’t come as a shock. But what may be surprising is that the city, which is home to some of the world’s most renowned educational institutions, barely reached the top 10.

Boston, along with Cambridge and Newton, got the 10th spot on a recent report conducted by WalletHub. The study compared the 150 largest metro areas in the U.S. using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, GreatSchools.org, Yelp, and other sources.

Nabbing the top three spots — Ann Arbor, Michigan, Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Madison, Wisconsin, respectively.

For each metro area, researchers examined educational attainment, quality of education, and the attainment gap. Each was evaluated through metrics that included the percentage of adults with bachelor’s degrees or higher, quality of public schools, and gender and racial education gaps. Each metric was scored on a 100-point scale, and the final rankings reflect a weighted average of the scores.

Boston had a total score of 77.99, an educational attainment rank of 8, and a quality of education and attainment gap of 66, according to the report.

Ann Arbor earned first place because 95 percent of adults aged 25 and older have at least a high school diploma. Also, 58 percent of adults have a bachelor’s degree or higher, and 31% have an advanced degree.

According to WalletHub’s findings, the Michigan city also ranks ninth in the country for the quality of its universities, has the 18th-best public school system, and has only a 1.3% gap between the share of women and men who have at least a bachelor’s degree.

“Higher education doesn’t guarantee better financial opportunities in the future, but it certainly correlates with it,” said WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo. “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.”