I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about higher education in Detroit. The pattern that can be seen here with more individuals with degrees on the West side is mirrored in other categories such as income. There are approximately 32,805 individuals with a Bachelors degree and 22,185 individuals who have a Graduate level degree. That’s a total of 54,990 people with higher education degrees or about 12% of Detroit’s population compared to 101,749 people with less than a High School education. Michigan’s population has an average 25.5% Bachelor’s degree attainment. Compared to other cities often grouped with Detroit we see: Philadelphia, PA 23%, Oakland, CA 37.9%, Cleveland, OH 14%, Chicago, IL 33.6%, and Baltimore, MD 22.6%.

Detroit has 11 different institutions for higher education (see map) and at one point in its history as Michigan’s largest city, it once held the most highly educated population in the state. Currently, Michigan’s highest educated city is East Grand Rapids with 77.5% of its population holding a Bachelors degree.

There are too many reasons why Detroit’s population has become less educated to write here, but a good place to start would be to look back to the “Inferior Quality Education in 1960,” which demonstrated the racial divide in allocating school resources.