Where's the smartest place in America?

Using Census Bureau data, Portfolio.com just did a survey of the 200 largest U.S. markets to determine the metropolitan area with the "strongest brainpower". Boulder, CO, sometimes known as "the Berkeley of Colorado", topped the list. According to the article, five out of every six adults in the Boulder area (82.5 percent) have attended college, and 26 percent of Boulder’s residents hold master’s, doctoral, or professional degrees, the highest figure in the country. Ann Arbor, Michigan and Washington, D.C. were the runners up. Fort Collins, CO was number 5 on the list. The city of Merced, CA, known as "the gateway to Yosemite" was at the bottom of the list. Thirty-four percent of Merced’s adult residents left high school without receiving diplomas and only 11.3 percent hold at least a bachelor’s degree.


For those of us in the Denver area, Denver came in at number 21. 67% of Denver adults had attended some college, with 13% having earned a graduate or professional degree.

And yes, the article does point out that the higher the level of education, the higher the earnings power, with those holding advanced degrees having more than 300 percent higher annual earnings than those who drop out of High School.

Shanghai, China

Other recent studies indicate that overall the U.S. continues to fall behind other countries in educational achievement. One report released just this month showed fifteen-year-olds in the U.S. ranking 25th among peers from 34 countries on a math test and scoring in the middle in science and reading, while China’s Shanghai topped the charts, raising concern that the U.S. isn’t prepared to succeed in the global economy.

At Pinnacol we strongly believe in having a well educated workforce.

That doesn't mean that you have to have a college degree for every position with our company. But as the managers I support constantly tell me, they are looking for what we call "continual learners". In other words, these are folks who can and want to advance their knowledge in a variety of different ways - through ongoing formal education, on the job training, self-study, etc. This ability to constantly learn allows our employees to adapt to an ever more rapidly changing world. The way we do our jobs now is radically different from the way we did them when I first started with this company, and will be radically different in 5-10 years from the way we do them today.