Finding higher education in the Quad Cities is not an issue. Between Palmer, Western Illinois, St. Ambrose,  Eastern Iowa Community Colleges, Black Hawk College, Hamilton, Purdue, and Augustana, there are many places for people to come and get higher education in the Quad Cities. Even though we have a ton of schools and quite the list of colleges, a new study reveals that the Quad Cities is definitely NOT one of the most educated areas in the country.

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A new study from our friends at WalletHub shows the list of the most and least educated cities and areas in the United States. To create this list, WalletHub compared the 150 most populated U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (MSA's) across two key dimensions,

  • Educational Attainment
  • Quality of Education & Attainment Gap

WalletHub looked at those two dimensions across 11 relevant metrics. After doing all of that math, WalletHub determined each MSA's weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score. After finding the overall scores of each MSA, WalletHub landed on this list.

Source: WalletHub

Where did the Quad Cities land? Well, we definitely aren't in the top half. The Quad Cities metro area ranked at #110 on this list with an overall score of 45.64. In Educational Attainment, the Quad Cities ranked at #101. In Quality of Education and Attainment Gap, the Quad Cities was in the bottom 10 and ranked at #140.

The most educated city in America is Ann Arbor, Michigan, which had an overall score of 94.02. The least educated city is Visalia, California, which had an overall score of 9.93. Ouch.

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LOOK: Here are the biggest HBCUs in America

More than 100 historically Black colleges and universities are designated by the U.S. Department of Education, meeting the definition of a school "established prior to 1964, whose principal mission was, and is, the education of black Americans."

StudySoup compiled the 20 largest historically Black colleges and universities in the nation, based on 2021 data from the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics. Each HBCU on this list is a four-year institution, and the schools are ranked by the total student enrollment.

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