How educated is Kansas City? See how it compares to other cities in new ranking
Kansas City is pretty educated compared to most of the cities in the United States, according to a new study.
A report from WalletHub examined the least and most educated cities in the country in 2026. The financial advice website says it compared the 150 most populated U.S. metropolitan statistical areas across two key dimensions: educational attainment, and quality of education and attainment gap.
WalletHub says it put together the data to identify where the most educated Americans are putting their degrees to work, since higher education levels can translate into higher salaries. However, the website also says that not all highly educated individuals move to the same types of places.
“Some prefer areas with a high concentration of similarly educated peers for networking and social opportunities, while others would rather stand out in a smaller, less competitive environment,” WalletHub says. “In addition, quality of life can vary significantly from one city to another, even for those with advanced education.”
The Kansas City area found itself nestled within the top 50, just below Salt Lake City and right above St. Louis.
Referred to as Kansas City, MO-KS, on WalletHub, the region was ranked the No. 45 most educated city in the country. The city ranked 34th in the educational attainment category and 104th in the quality of education and attainment gap category.
Kansas City is categorized as “high education level & high income,” which it shares with cities like Dallas, Philadelphia, Denver and San Francisco.
Some of the metrics WalletHub used to obtain its results include:
- Share of adults aged 25 and older with at least some college experience or an associate’s degree or higher
- Quality of public school system
- Racial and gender education gap
- Enrolled students in top 791 universities per capita
The top five most educated cities on WalletHub’s list are Ann Arbor, Michigan; Durham, North Carolina; San Jose, California; Washington, D.C.; and Madison, Wisconsin. Other cities in Missouri and Kansas that were included are Springfield (No. 86) and Wichita (No. 102).
The data was collected from sources like the U.S. Census Bureau, the Education Equality Index from GreatSchools.org and previous WalletHub research.
