PROVIDENCE - How important is a college degree? Financially, an advanced degree means you could earn 128 percent more than someone with a GED diploma.
That’s bad news for Providence metropolitan area residents. The region failed to make the top half of the Brainiest Bastions list, published by Portfolio.com on Dec. 1 using data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
More than 29 percent of Providence-Fall River-New Bedford metro residents stopped at a high school diploma, and 26.15 percent have an associate degree or attended college without attaining a degree. Those who dropped out before high school graduation stood at 16.65 percent.
Only 10.48 percent of the Creative Capital-area’s work force boasts a graduate or professional degree, and 17.68 percent obtained a bachelor’s degree.
Providence had a “brainpower index” of -0.118, placing it at No. 113 out of the nation’s 200 largest markets; Montgomery, Ala., Los Angeles, and Birmingham, Ala. - ranking Nos. 110 to 112 - all beat Providence’s score.
The nation’s smartest are in the Boulder, Colo., metro area, where five out of every six adults have attended college and 26 percent hold graduate or professional degrees. Ann Arbor, Mich., and Washington, D.C., came in second and third place.
Boston, with a brain power index of 1.854, came in at No. 8; 18.33 percent of Beantown-area residents hold a graduate degree, 23.85 percent hold a bachelor’s degree while 9.44 percent did not finish high school.
The lowest-ranking metropolitan areas (No. 196-200) were in Texas and California. Merced, Calif., sat in last place with only 3.45 percent of its population holding a graduate or professional degree; 33.93 percent of its residents dropped out before graduating from high school.
Portfolio.com also included the average annual earnings for workers on each of the five levels of the education ladder: advanced degree ($61,287), bachelor’s degree ($46,805), associate degree or attended college without any degree ($32,874), and high-school graduate ($26,894), high-school dropout ($19,405).
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