Is This The Most Educated City in Iowa?

According to US News, Iowa as a whole ranks 18th for the best education system in the country. I wanted to expand on that and dive into which city in Iowa would be considered the "best educated."  It's fairly common knowledge that generally the better the education you receive, the more money you can make when you enter the workforce. That's not always the case obviously but for the most part, higher education levels generally lead to higher salaries and better jobs.

Wallet Hub looked at 150 of the largest populated areas in the United States and used 11 different metrics to determine their findings. They used adults who are 25 and over who have a bachelor's degree and the quality of public school systems to help determine where each city would rank.

It should be no surprise to you that Des Moines is the only city in Iowa to show up on their list. With a population of a little over 215,000, Des Moines is really the only city big enough to show up on the charts. While Cedar Rapids is a pretty big area, the population of just over 134,000 wasn't big enough to crack into the top 150 cities.

Des Moines shows up at number 55 with a total education score of 57.20. In "Educational Attainment" Des Moines was ranked 44th, which is pretty good. That would put the city in the top 2/3rds of cities in the United States.

Where Des Moines does make a drastic fall, according to Wallet Hub was in the "Quality of Education & Attainment Gap" with a ranking of 124 out of 150. If the Quality of Education & Attainment Gap was ranked, even in the top 100, you could bet the overall score for Des Moines would be a lot higher. The number 1 most educated city in America, according to their study, is Ann Arbor Michigan.

Without reading too much into Wallet Hub's findings it should be noted that Iowa has one of the highest high school graduation rates in the nation, according to US News. They don't have a single high school in Des Moines in the top 5 best high schools in Iowa.

Their top 5 ranked high schools are West Senior High School in Iowa City at number 1 followed by Decorah High School, Pleasant Valley High School in Bettendorf, Ames High School, and Gilbert Highschool at number 5.