Impressed with the number of smart people you run into around here?
There's a good reason.
The South Bay metropolitan area has the nation's second-highest proportion of college-educated residents -- 45.3 percent of adults 25 and older.
The San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara area ranks second in the nation only to the Washington, D.C., metro area, which has 46.8 percent of its population college educated. The San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont area ranked fourth, with 43.4 percent.
The figures are important for several reasons. Cities benefit from the characteristics typical of college graduates: higher incomes, longer life spans, more two-parent families. Those translate to a higher tax base, better public services and more private amenities, according to Alan Berube, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who looked at 2010 U.S. Census data for the 100 largest metropolitan areas.
But the Golden State did not have a uniformly good showing. Five of the 10 cities at the bottom of the list were in California. They ranged from Fresno, No. 92, with 20.1 percent college grads, down to Riverside-San Bernardino, Stockton, Modesto and Bakersfield-Delano, which scored last with 15 percent.
In looking at changes over 40 years, Berube found "the distribution of educated people is growing more unequal across the American landscape over time," he said. "It's a brain drain and a brain gain."
Across the nation, the portion of
college-educated residents in metro areas has grown, from an average of 11.6 percent in 1970 to 29.5 percent in 2010. So even those cities at the bottom of the list have gained college graduates but at a slower rate than those cities at the top. In 1970, Stockton residents included 8 percent who were college grads; that rose to only 17.7 percent by 2010.San Jose ranked third in 1970, below D.C. and Madison, Wis.; San Francisco ranked fifth, right after Bridgeport, Conn.
While college education clearly benefits individuals economically -- adding about $1 million in earnings over a lifetime, Berube said -- an area's concentration of college grads bodes well for communities.
College grads create an ecosystem that enhances the value of living around people like themselves. "Young educated workers will change jobs numerous times over their careers, which makes living in a large, 'thick' labor market with diverse opportunities more appealing," according to Berube's report.
In addition, "high quality, good-paying jobs require a college education," said Lenny Mendonca, a director at McKinsey & Co. and a member of the California Competes project. That group released a study Thursday warning that California is not producing enough college graduates to maintain its economic vitality and leadership.
That's true across the country. "We're not keeping pace in the advances in education made in the last 40 years," Berube said.
And with the degree-producing pipeline not wide enough, Silicon Valley can't assume it will remain a destination for graduates. "Folks are fighting for similar limited resources, whether it's college graduates in the Bay Area or from around the country or the globe," said Dennis Cima of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. "We know that the trajectory of supply and demand will leave us short of degreed individuals in California."
Overall, cities at the top of the Brookings list greatly increased their proportion of college graduates in 40 years. Among the top one-third of cities, only five did not gain at least 20 percentage points.
Cities like Dayton, Ohio, that lost their manufacturing base in the past four decades often saw college graduates flee. But those areas that retooled their economies -- for example, to build up a service-based industry -- attracted and retained college-educated people for those new jobs.
In whatever way, increasing the number of college graduates is crucial, experts said. "It's about jobs, and it's about competitiveness," Mendonca said. "We compete based on talent, on innovation and on ideas."
Contact Sharon Noguchi at 408-271-3775. Follow her at Twitter.com/NoguchiOnK12.
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