West Hartford ranks no. 46, ahead of the nation’s capital.

By Ronni Newton

Photo credit: Ronni Newton

An online site dedicated to encouraging potential PhD candidates to obtain degress recently ranked the top cities in the country with population of 50,000 or greater in order of most doctoral degree-holders, and West Hartford came in at no. 46, just ahead of Washington, D.C.

“Smart people are choosing to live here,” said West Hartford Town Manager Ron Van Winkle. He said that the percentage of town residents with a bachelors degree is one of the highest in the country.

“It’s a real feather in our cap. These are individual choices,” Van Winkle said. “To be among the top 50 in the U.S. is rather remarkable, a real nod that educated people choose to live here,” he said.

Many of the other towns on the list, including Ann Arbor, MI; Durham, NC; Madison, WI; and College Station, TX, are home to major research universities. Many Silicon Valley cities also made the list.

New Haven, home to both Yale University and Southern Connecticut State University, was ranked no. 33 and is the only other Connecticut town on the list.

According to the ranking, the city with the greatest number of doctorate-holders is Brookline, MA, with an incredible 14 percent of residents holding the advanced degree. The 3.5 mile proximity to Harvard, Boston College, Boston University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was identified as the contributing reason so many highly-educated people live in such a concentrated area.

Nationally, the article cites U.S. Census Bureau statistics that “fewer than 2 percent of Americans aged 25 and over had studied for a doctorate.”

The article cites the advantages of earning a doctoral degree, which include prestige and a greater prospect if a successful career in your chosen field. “What’s more, doctorate holders tend to bring home bigger paychecks, and they are less likely to be out of work,” the article states.

The authors cite reasons why each city on the top-50 list might attract the well-educated. West Hartford’s no. 46 ranking, with 3.7 percent of the population holding doctoral degrees, was attributed primarily to the “the town’s location and sense of community” rather than its academic opportunities:

West Hartford itself, however, was included among the “Coolest Suburbs Worth a Visit” list compiled by Travel + Leisure in 2010. That year it also made Kiplinger’s “10 Best Cities for the Next Decade” and CNNMoney.com’s “Top 100 Places to Live,” with Kiplinger commenting that the area is “an idyllic place to raise a family” and that “the town couldn’t be better situated.”

Methodology Used in Ranking by onlinephdprograms.org:

The core source of information for the ranking of this article was City-Data.com – specifically its list of the “Top 101 cities with the most people having Doctorate degrees” in American urban centers with populations of 50,000 or more.

However, the original list appears to contain figures from the 2000 U.S. Census, so it is in need of updating. With this in mind, to compile our ranking we used www.city-data.com’s current “Educational Attainment” statistics, relating to 2012, from the individual cities’ pages (see, for example, Palo Alto). These graphs show the percentage of each city’s inhabitants who were in possession of a doctoral degree during said year. We also utilized 2012 population estimates – or 2010 statistics where necessary – from the U.S. Census Bureau. Our list now represents an up-to-date look at the 50 U.S. cities with populations of 50,000 or greater that feature the highest percentage of doctorate holders.