With a nod to Peter Schorsch for first tweeting about this, we have yet another survey that reports that when it comes to ranking communities in terms of brainpower, the Tampa Bay Area ain't at the top of the list.
It's not even in the middle of the list.
Portfolio.com has just produced a survey of the nation's 200 largest markets ranking brainpower, as indicated by their residents’ educational attainment.
Not surprisingly, a host of college towns dominate the list, with numero uno being Boulder, Colorado, the home of the University of Colorado. Ann Arbor (the home of the University of Michigan) is second, Washington D.C. third, Boston eighth, San Francisco 10th.
And the Tampa/St. Pete region, you ask? Try 134.
Portfolio ranks several Florida cities/communities higher, with the college towns of Gainesville (14th) and Tallahassee (34th) ranked the highest. They're followed up by Bradenton/Sarasota (82), Palm Bay-Melbourne (90), Jacksonville (91) ,Orlando (115). Miami/Fort Lauderdale (118) and Cape Coral/Fort Myers (125).
Portfolio.com used U.S. Census Bureau data to analyze the levels of educational attainment in 200 metros, ranging in size from New York City to Burlington, Vermont.
The study assigned point values to five rungs of an educational ladder, ranging from high-school dropouts to holders of advanced degrees. The score for a given market depended on the percentage of adult residents (25 or older) on each rung. The higher the score, the stronger a market’s collective brainpower. Read after the jump for the top 25 smartest communities:
This article appears in Dec 2-8, 2010.