Where does Wichita rank on list of most (and least) educated cities in America?

Wichita was so close to making the top 100 on WalletHub’s list of the most educated cities in America.

But the city fell two spots short, ranking No. 102 out of the 150 most populated U.S. metropolitan statistical areas.

The report released June 29 had one main goal: “identify where the most educated Americans are putting their degrees to work.”

To find the most (and least) educated U.S. cities, WalletHub analysts compared the 150 places using weighted averages across 11 metrics that fell into two buckets: “educational attainment” and “quality of education & attainment gap.”

Wichita placed No. 95 when it came to educational attainment and No. 98 in quality of education & attainment gap.

Wichita was the only city in Kansas to be included in the report.

Most and least educated cities

The top five educated metropolitan statistical areas, according to WalletHub analysts, are:

1. Ann Arbor, Michigan
2. Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina
3. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, California
4. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria
5. Madison, Wisconsin

The least educated cities, per the report, are:

1. Visalia, California
2. McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas
3. Brownsville-Harlingen, Texas
4. Bakersfield, California
5. Modesto, California

Source: WalletHub

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

Finding the most educated cities

WalletHub compared the 150 largest metropolitan statistical areas across 11 metrics in two categories.

Educational attainment metrics, using data pulled as of June 1, consisted of:

• Share of adults 25 and older with a high school diploma or higher
• Share of adults 25 and older with some college experience or higher
• Share of adults 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree or higher
• Share of adults 25 and older with graduate or professional degree

Quality of education & attainment gap metrics included:

• Quality of public school system
• Average quality of universities
• Enrolled students in top 791 universities per capita
• Number of summer learning opportunities per capita
• Racial education gap
• Gender education gap
• Education equality index score