Culture
Where U.S. Brainpower Tends to Cluster
Engineers are concentrated in San Jose, while D.C. has the most social scientists with advanced degrees.
Brainpower is the fuel that fires today’s tech-driven knowledge economy. But it is also unevenly concentrated across America’s cities and metros, so much so that mayors and policy-makers have developed strategies specifically aimed at increasing their ability to attract, retain, and capture powerful brains.
We already know a lot about where college graduates and the creative class tend to concentrate. An even more rarified category of brainpower is made up of people with advanced graduate and professional degrees. While nearly 40 percent of Americans have a college degree and about a third of workers are members of the creative class, just 11 percent of adults 25 and over have a graduate or professional degree.