this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2025
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This is somewhat a "people live in cities" graph, but not as stark of one I expected. Not all big cities are so educated, plus there are a lot of rural places that draw in a surprising number of people with advanced degrees.
Still, I'm amused that Interstate 29 in specific lights up like a string of Christmas lights.
Based on the states I know, some of the surprising rural areas are where state universities are.
"People live in cities and get degrees in college towns" map.
I live in such a place. You'd think it would be a bluish county because of it, but it's deeply red.
Oklahoma only has 1 county lit up, and it's where a state university is, OSU. But it's ranked lower nationally than OU (#196 vs #132). Both are in otherwise small towns, basically overrun by their respective colleges. Anecdotally, Norman (OU) is known to have nothing in town, but Stillwater (OSU) has it's own subculture and town pride.
I'm curious how many of these counties just contain college towns vs how many actually might attract highly educated people.
Norman is effectively a suburb of OKC. Also it's by county so all the stuff actually closer to OKC will out weigh the college town there.
It does appear to be mostly college towns and some high education cities though
The county south of Nashville is basically the Nashville suburbs, with a serious legacy of redlining.