- Provo-Orem ranked 15th in WalletHub's "Most Educated Cities in America" list.
- The area excelled in educational attainment with high diploma and associate degree rates.
- Orem's mayor highlights education as a catalyst for creativity and community growth.
PROVO — It's been a pretty, pretty good June for the Provo-Orem metropolitan area.
Just a couple of weeks after WalletHub saluted Provo as the best-run city in America, the personal finance company is now highlighting Utah County's largest city — in tandem with Orem — in its "Most Educated Cities in America" Top 15 list.
WalletHub compared the nation's 150 largest metropolitan statistical areas using 11 education "key metrics," ranging from the share of adults with college degrees to the quality of the region's public school system.
The results: Provo-Orem slips into the study's "10% Club" with an overall No. 15-out-of-150 ranking.
Meanwhile, in the study's two anchoring dynamics, the Utah County community received a No. 17 ranking in "educational attainment rank" and No. 41 in "quality of education and attainment gap" ranking.
The college town of Ann Arbor, Michigan, claimed WalletHub's 2026 title of "America's Most Educated City" — followed by Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina; San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, California; the Washington, D.C., grouping of Washington-Arlington-Alexandria; and Madison, Wisconsin.
Salt Lake City is ranked No. 44, just ahead of Kansas City.
Provo-Orem is also graded highly in a couple of WalletHub's "educational attainment" categories — No. 4 in percentage of residents holding high school diplomas and No. 2 in the percentage of adult residents holding associate degrees or some college experience.
The Provo-Orem metro area is home to Utah's largest university by enrollment — Orem's Utah Valley University — and the private Brigham Young University in Provo, which is sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
"We have an education culture in our communities," Orem Mayor Karen McCandless told the Deseret News.
"Provo has BYU. Orem has Utah Valley University. Between those two universities, you're looking at over 80,000 college students."
And the five metropolitan areas at the bottom of WalletHub's "Most & Least Educated Cities in America"?
Three are from California communities and two from south Texas: Modesto, California; Bakersfield, California; Brownsville-Harlingen, Texas; McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas; and, at No. 150, Visalia, California.
WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo said higher education doesn't guarantee better financial opportunities — but the two are correlated.
"The most educated cities provide good learning opportunities from childhood all the way through the graduate level," said Lupo in the WalletHub report.
How are the 'most and least' educated cities identified?
WalletHub evaluated 11 key metrics across two dimensions: educational attainment and quality of education and attainment gap.
The analysts utilized each metropolitan statistical area's weighted average across all metrics to calculate an overall score, with 100 being the highest possible total score.
Ann Arbor ended up with a total score of 94.8. And, on the opposite end, Visalia registered a total score of 12.3.
Metrics from the study's educational attainment dimension — which accounted for 80% of a city's total score — included the share of adults with high school diplomas or higher, and, in separate metrics, shares of adults with associate degrees, bachelor's degrees, and graduate or professional degrees.
Metrics from the quality of education and attainment gap dimension — which accounted for 20% of the total score — included the quality of a metropolitan area's public school system and universities, along with the measured education gaps between races and genders.
Ann Arbor is ranked as the most educated in the nation. Over 96% of adults reportedly have at least a high school diploma — and nearly 60% of adult residents have earned at least bachelor's degrees.
Additionally, Ann Arbor scored high in "equality in educational attainment" marks — with only a 1.8% gap between the share of women and men with at least a bachelor's degree.
Meanwhile, the Durham-Chapel Hill metro area includes a pair of highly regarded universities — Duke and the University of North Carolina. More than a quarter of adult residents in that region have graduate or professional degrees.
Orem Mayor McCandless: Education the 'catalyst for ideas and growth'
McCandless is quick to point out ancillary benefits that a metro area such as Provo-Orem enjoys by promoting education. Ideas, she said, happen in an educational environment.
Through education, "people think about things that they may not have thought about before," McCandless said. "That's what education does — it produces creativity. We have a lot of entrepreneurship happening in Utah Valley, and I think (education) is the catalyst for ideas and growth."
To borrow a college sports trope, it's one thing to claim a coveted spot in the rankings — it's another to keep that top spot.
But McCandless is certain her Utah County community is committed to promoting educational avenues to foster learning and advancement. "We provide opportunities for growth," she said. "Just having that sort of thriving community inherently lifts education."
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Jason Swensen
