Huntsville found to be 17th most educated city in USA

Huntsville was found to be the 17th most educated city in the United States by WalletHub in a recent study they conducted.

They compared the largest 150 metropolitan statistical areas, and assigned them scores based on 11 key metrics. We’ll discuss each of those metrics in more detail later, but understand that scores were out of 100, with 80 possible points coming from “educational attainment” and 20 points from “quality of education & obtainment gap.”

The actual score of both categories weren’t given on a per city basis, but Huntsville ranked 22th in educational attainment and 10th in quality of education & obtainment gap, with an overall score of 67.69/100.

In case you were wondering, Ann Arbor, Michigan, was ranked first with an overall score of 94.48.

Huntsville’s score reflects our massive areospace + federal contracting sector, as well as the quality of our public school systems and universities.

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Methodology of the study

Earlier I promised more information on each individual metric that made up the scores. I will be doing my best to explain each metric in layman’s terms, but of course you can find the complete methodology here.

To reiterate: a cities’ total score came from the combination of two categories—educational attainment (80 points) and quality of education & attainment gap (20 points).

Here is how each category was calculated:

Educational attainment

• Share of adults aged 25+ with a high school diploma or higher: 20 points
• Share of adults aged 25+ with some college experience or an associate’s degree or higher: 20 points
• Share of adults aged 25+ with a bachelor’s degree or higher: 20 points
• Share of adults aged 25+ with a graduate or professional degree: 20 points

Quality of education & attainment gap

• Quality of public school systems: 4.44 points
• Average quality of universities: 4.44 points
• Students enrolled in top 791 universities per capita: 2.22 points
• Number of summer learning opportunites: 2.22 points
• Percentage of Black bachelor’s degree holders to their White counterparts: 2.22 points
• Difference between the percentage of female bachelor’s degree holders and the percentage of their male counterparts: 2.22 points
• Education equality index score (how well low-income students do compared to all students): 2.22 points

Clearly, there is an emphasis on having highly educated adults in your city, but that is not the only metric that matters. Huntsville would not have finished 17th in the country if not for our exceptional scores in quality of education & attainment gap.

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