Ah. That's why.
this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2025
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I see you, Los Alamos.
Dang CO, you smart sexy bastard.
Damn, Arizona and Utah. What happened to you?
And Arkansas and Louisiana. They're all in the South, no surprise there. :/
Let me guess the red in Indiana contains Purdue and Bloomington
Neither I believe it's Hamilton County, the (comparatively) rich suburb of Indianapolis.
Those are the green counties actually.
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.
The county south of Nashville is basically the Nashville suburbs, with a serious legacy of redlining.
Based on the states I know, some of the surprising rural areas are where state universities are.
"People live in cities and get degrees in college towns" map.
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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.
I assume a lot of defense stuff air force academy, NORAD, space force...
Doesn’t hurt that a lot of people who have visited end up coming back to stay. Colorado is pretty great place to live.
I've spent most of my time in southern Colorado which is alright but central/northern is stunning...it's almost like if oregon or Washington were landlocked.
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.
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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
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Why would they be? The map is clearly not about that information. That would be a map titled “percent people 25+ WITHOUT a bachelor’s degree.”
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I want to see the map with 20-30 and 30-40 too!
I want to see a map with % of high school equivalency.
I am part of the original map though, I only have an associates
Whycome the south doesn't has orange boxes? Is we stupid?
Yes you does
No I ain’t
NC and TN have some. But we often is.
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.
I mean, for NC it's the Durham/Raleigh suburbs plus Duke University, so plenty of out of staters (seriously, just go to Duke gardens on a weekend, it's pretty amazing how many languages are spoken). Which would probably explain a lot of it.
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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.
Cambridge, Massachusetts might be its rival
I was wondering what that was.
Without having done my research, this feels like a lack of data more than anything.
If you are wondering what that red spot in Wyoming ans adjacent green in Idaho is, they are the Teton counties (one on each state).
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I live near Indianapolis.
You wouldn't now it.
Edit: Ironically, I made a spelling typo. Sigh.
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Mississippi making Arkansas and Louisiana look bad.
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