College grads seek jobs, culture in cities

updated 2:47 p.m. ET April 10, 2006

WASHINGTON - College graduates are flocking to America’s big cities, chasing jobs and culture and driving up home prices.

Though many of the largest cities have lost population in the past three decades, nearly all have added college graduates, an analysis by The Associated Press found.

The findings offer hope for urban areas, many of which have spent decades struggling with financial problems, job losses and high poverty rates.

But they also spell trouble for some cities, especially those in the Northeast and Midwest, that have fallen behind the South and West in attracting highly educated workers.

“The largest predictor of economic well-being in cities is the percent of college graduates,” said Ned Hill, professor of economic development at Cleveland State University. To do well, he said, cities must be attractive to educated people.

Nationally, a little more than one-fourth of people 25 and older had at least bachelor’s degrees in 2004. Some 84 percent had high school diplomas or the equivalent.

By comparison, in 1970 only a bit more than one in 10 adults had bachelor’s degrees and about half had high school diplomas.

Seattle was the best-educated city in 2004 with just over half the adults having bachelor’s degrees. Following closely were San Francisco; Raleigh, N.C.; Washington and Austin, Texas.

Molly Wankel, who has a doctorate in educational administration, said she moved to the Washington area for a job, and the culture of the city pulled her from the suburbs. Wankel, 51, grew up in eastern Tennessee and works at a company that develops software and training materials. She recently bought a home in the city.

“I just enjoy walking around looking at the architecture and the way people have renovated these 100-year-old homes,” Wankel said. “I love the landscaping and the lovely mix of many races, straight people, gays, singles, older people, younger people.”

The AP analyzed census data from 21 of the largest cities from 1970 to 2004. The AP used every-10-year census data from 1970 to 2000, and the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey for 2004.

The 21 cities were chosen because of their size and location to provide regional balance. The analysis was expanded for 2004, the latest year for data, to include all 70 cities with populations of 250,000 or more.

While most states in the Northeast have high percentages of college graduates, their big cities do not.

Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey were among the top five states in the percentage of adults with college degrees in 2004. But the Northeast placed no city among the top five, and only one from the region — Boston — was in the top 20.

Cities with few college graduates have a hard time generating good-paying jobs. That, in turn, makes it hard to attract more college graduates, said Richard Vedder, an economics professor at Ohio University.

Cities such as Newark, N.J.; Detroit and Cleveland have relatively few college graduates, which helps explain why they are struggling to recover from the decline of U.S. manufacturing, Vedder said.

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