# Educational attainment and urban success

**Published by:** [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/)
**Published on:** 2017-09-09
**Categories:** cities, city-observatory, college-degree, education, ken-robinson, ted-talk, ted-talks, uncategorized, urbanism
**URL:** https://brandondonnelly.com/educational-attainment-and-urban-success

## Content

We know that educational attainment matters a great deal for the economic success of our cities. In fact, by some measures, it is the single most important factor. City Observatory found that 60% of the variation in per capita income across large U.S. metro areas could be explained simply by the percentage of the population with a 4-year college degree. So education matters a lot. Many of you have probably seen this entertaining TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson called: Do schools kill creativity? It has almost 47 million views at this point. Well, he was recently interviewed by Ingrid Peritz of the Globe and Mail and I have to share the following quote, because I think it’s terrific (particularly the part in bold):“We need to recognize that children have a huge range of natural abilities and they all have them differently. Our education systems are designed to focus on a small band of those. If you have a narrow conception of ability, you end up with a very big conception of disability or inability.” More people with a college degree seems to be a pretty good thing. But the solution doesn’t start there. Logically, it starts much earlier – with children. All of this matters not just because people with a degree should, on average, make more money and have a higher quality of life. But because it’s heartbreaking to think that some young child with incredible talents might be being mislabeled as inept simply because we have a system that is, well, inept. I recommend you read the interview with Ken. Photo by Christian Fregnan on Unsplash

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