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Barista Ashley Fabiana serves a customer at the Pioneer Courthouse Square Starbucks. Oregon doesn't have enough high-paying jobs to keep up with other cities in attracting college-educated residents, according to Forbes magazine.

(Samantha Bakall/The Oregonian)

Portland has plenty of college-educated young residents but not enough good jobs to keep up with America's smartest cities, according to a list the magazine released Monday.

Smartest cities

1. Boston

2. Pittsburgh

3. San Jose

4. Grand Rapids

5. Washington, D.C.

6. Baltimore

7. Raleigh

8. San Francisco

9. Seattle

10. New York City

To compile the list of the U.S. metropolitan areas growing most in brainpower, Forbes considered the growth since 2000 in the number of residents with four-year college degrees, weighted to favor cities that already had high percentages of college educated residents and those that finished 2013 with a particularly high number.

Boston topped the list, with 44.8 percent of adult residents having at least a bachelor's degree, a 7.8 percentage point jump from 2000.

On the West Coast, three cities made the top 10: San Jose (3), San Francisco (8) and Seattle (9).

Portland, the magazine noted, "has an inordinate proportion of college-educated young residents working at lower wages," which may turn off some of the indebted literati. "In contrast Houston, where high-paying jobs are being created at a healthy clip, the young educated cohort grew five times as fast."

Forbes also ranked smaller cities from a pool of 380 metropolitan areas, finding large growth in two groups, college towns and what the magazine called "amenity" havens, places that attract residents for lifestyle and recreation choices.

Bend finished ninth on that list.