Brainpower rankings usually identify the usual suspects: college towns like Boston, Washington, D.C., and the San Francisco Bay area. And to be sure, these places generally have the highest per capita education levels. However, it’s worthwhile to look at the metro areas that are gaining college graduates most rapidly; this is an indicator of momentum that is likely to carry over into the future.

To determine where college graduates are settling, demographer Wendell Cox analyzed the change in the number of holders of bachelor’s degrees and above between 2007 and 2012 in the 51 metropolitan statistical areas with over a million people (all saw gains). For the most part, the fastest-growing brain hubs are in the South and Intermountain West (which excludes the states on the Pacific Coast). Some of these places are usually not associated with the highest levels of academic achievement, and for the most, they still lag the national average in college graduation rates.

But times are changing, and educated people are increasingly heading to these metro areas, notably in the South, were job growth has been robust and the cost of living is far lower than in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York or Los Angeles. This includes New Orleans, which ties for first place on our list with San Antonio. The New Orleans metro area’s population of college graduates grew by 44,000 from 2007 to 2012, a 20.3% increase, nearly double the national average of 10.9%. (The percentage of college grads in the U.S. stood at 19.4% in 2012, up from 18% in 2007.)

New Orleans’ story, of course, is unique; the jump certainly is partly due to the return of evacuees to the city after Katrina, and some scoff that the region is destined to return to its historical pattern of exporting its educated young. But right now the American Community Survey data seems to indicate otherwise, as does the decision in recent years by numerous technology, videogame and media businesses to establish operations in the metro area, including General Electric, Paris-based Gameloft and the satellite communications company Globalstar, which in 2010 moved its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Covington, a prosperous suburb of the Crescent City.

What is happening in New Orleans, where I have worked as a consultant, is unique, but it also follows a broader pattern that we see in other areas. Unable to afford to settle long-term in traditional “brain centers,” educated people are increasingly looking for places that have strong economies but also many of the cultural and natural amenities associated with the traditional meccas for the educated. With housing prices that are half to a third of Silicon Valley or San Francisco, New Orleans offered educated workers, particularly younger ones, many of the things they look for, but at an affordable cost.

“For $65,000 a year in San Francisco you get a shared apartment and no car,” says long-time New Orleans tech entrepreneur Chris Reed. ”Here, you get great restaurants and clubs, and you get to have a car and your own nice apartment. It’s a no-brainer.”

Other cities with some of the same characteristics are also winning in the race to bring in more educated workers. Nowhere is this more true than in Texas, which is home to four of the top 12 metro areas on our list. Tops is co-first place San Antonio, which had a net gain of 76,000 college-educated people since 2007, or 20.3%.

Like New Orleans, the San Antonio area has traditionally lagged behind in attracting educated people; nearly one resident in six does not have a high school diploma. But the old Texas town also has many amenities that appeal to educated workers, notably great food and a good nightlife scene. In addition, it boasts one of the fastest-growing regional economies in the country, with expanding tech and energy businesses, something that may have a particular appeal in this still weak recovery.

“When the buzz starts … and hipsters start to get wise to the neighborhood assets that are here, once the hipsters get wind of it – you’ll have to beat them away with a stick,” says economic geographer Jim Russell.

Austin places third, which should come as no surprise — the area is home to the main campus of the University of Texas, boasts a thriving music scene and a strong technology infrastructure. Nor should the rapid growth of educated residents in sixth-ranked Houston, up 16% since 2007, which also enjoys low costs, an increasingly attractive cultural scene and one of the fastest growing hubs of dense urban living in the country. Dallas, also a fast-growing area, lands in 12th place on our list, boosting its college graduate population by 13%, or 175,000.

One of the more surprising metro areas in our top 10 is fifth place Louisville, Ky.-Ind. The home of Humana, it has a thriving health care sector, and also is strong in the food industry and logistics. It has seen a 16.2% increase in the number of educated residents.

Strong growth has also occurred in the Intermountain West, led by Denver (seventh) and Salt Lake City (eighth). Both areas have been beneficiaries of the migration of people and companies from California. This may also explain the growth of 11th place Phoenix, an area that has made remarkable strides since the disastrous days of the housing bust and is once again attracting migrants in larger numbers than any large metro area outside Texas.

So if these areas are leading the race to capture “talent,” who is lagging behind? Not surprising at the bottom of the list are a series of Rust Belt cities with relatively weak economies, led by last place Detroit, where the number of college-educated residents rose 4.1%. Its followed by Providence, Cleveland and Cincinnati.

Boston, long styled as the “Athens” of America, ranks 47th on our list. Over the past five years Boston has gained some 98,000 college educated people, an increase of 7.2%, well below the national average. Beantown, of course, can always claim it has the highest “quality” brains but even in terms of percentage gains of people with graduate degrees it ranks only 41st .

The data show the universe of educated people is not becoming more “spiky” as some suggest, but is spreading out. This is true not only in terms of percentage growth, but in absolute numbers. Since 2007, for example, the Houston and Dallas metro areas have added more BAs than San Francisco-Oakland, and nearly twice as many as Boston. As a result, these and other such cities are gaining a critical mass in brainpower not widely recognized in the Eastern-dominated media.

At very least, we can say that the conventional wisdom favoring the traditional “brain” cities seems flawed. There will always be areas with more educated people per capita than others, if for no other reason than historical inertia and lack of migration, particularly among the less educated. But the clear pattern now is for brainpower, like population and jobs, to continue dispersing, largely to the South, the Southeast and the Intermountain West, with ramifications that will be felt in the economy in the decades ahead.











Educational Attainment: BAs & Higher Corrected (2015-05-07) Major Metropolitan Area 2007 2012 Change Change % Rank Atlanta, GA 1,151,723 1,243,122 91,399 7.9% 45 Austin, TX 382,119 477,058 94,939 24.8% 3 Baltimore, MD 589,874 677,837 87,963 14.9% 14 Birmingham, AL 187,094 214,201 27,107 14.5% 17 Boston, MA-NH 1,271,193 1,369,597 98,404 7.7% 47 Buffalo, NY 207,907 231,718 23,811 11.5% 34 Charlotte, NC-SC 348,923 401,116 52,193 15.0% 13 Chicago, IL-IN-WI 1,984,496 2,190,424 205,928 10.4% 40 Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN 393,076 419,714 26,638 6.8% 48 Cleveland, OH 380,479 405,731 25,252 6.6% 49 Columbus, OH 367,811 419,136 51,325 14.0% 20 Dallas-Fort Worth, TX 1,155,069 1,330,312 175,243 15.2% 12 Denver, CO 595,437 708,325 112,888 19.0% 6 Detroit, MI 786,153 819,347 33,194 4.2% 51 Hartford, CT 276,002 305,100 29,098 10.5% 39 Houston, TX 972,615 1,157,627 185,012 19.0% 6 Indianapolis. IN 333,079 377,189 44,110 13.2% 24 Jacksonville, FL 221,907 258,893 36,986 16.7% 9 Kansas City, MO-KS 410,109 460,391 50,282 12.3% 32 Las Vegas, NV 257,886 293,001 35,115 13.6% 23 Los Angeles, CA 2,458,215 2,720,654 262,439 10.7% 36 Louisville, KY-IN 195,760 233,566 37,806 19.3% 5 Memphis, TN-MS-AR 197,292 222,813 25,521 12.9% 26 Miami, FL 1,058,815 1,186,398 127,583 12.0% 33 Milwaukee,WI 308,214 337,253 29,039 9.4% 42 Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI 774,669 881,581 106,912 13.8% 21 Nashville, TN 287,154 355,630 68,476 23.8% 4 New Orleans. LA 172,965 216,970 44,005 25.4% 1 New York, NY-NJ-PA 4,433,180 4,836,321 403,141 9.1% 43 Oklahoma City, OK 210,720 237,329 26,609 12.6% 28 Orlando, FL 379,636 409,263 29,627 7.8% 46 Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD 1,204,380 1,377,684 173,304 14.4% 18 Phoenix, AZ 709,284 818,434 109,150 15.4% 11 Pittsburgh, PA 456,717 513,838 57,121 12.5% 30 Portland, OR-WA 479,207 549,825 70,618 14.7% 16 Providence, RI-MA 301,591 320,262 18,671 6.2% 50 Raleigh, NC 278,754 324,318 45,564 16.3% 10 Richmond, VA 244,277 280,650 36,373 14.9% 14 Riverside-San Bernardino, CA 469,381 519,680 50,299 10.7% 36 Rochester, NY 205,014 226,912 21,898 10.7% 36 Sacramento, CA 403,140 435,485 32,345 8.0% 44 Salt Lake City, UT 193,167 229,140 35,973 18.6% 8 San Antonio, TX 300,114 376,445 76,331 25.4% 1 San Diego, CA 631,996 722,819 90,823 14.4% 18 San Francisco-Oakland, CA 1,251,139 1,414,393 163,254 13.0% 25 San Jose, CA 527,167 592,703 65,536 12.4% 31 Seattle, WA 814,902 918,119 103,217 12.7% 27 St. Louis,, MO-IL 521,047 586,547 65,500 12.6% 28 Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL 496,826 544,121 47,295 9.5% 41 Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC 284,924 317,741 32,817 11.5% 34 Washington, DC-VA-MD-WV 1,658,902 1,885,862 226,960 13.7% 22 Total 34,181,501 38,352,595 4,171,094 12.2% Outside MMSAs 20,152,010 22,389,927 2,237,917 11.1% United States 54,333,511 60,742,522 6,409,011 11.8%

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and Distinguished Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University, and a member of the editorial board of the Orange County Register. He is author of The City: A Global History and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. His most recent study, The Rise of Postfamilialism, has been widely discussed and distributed internationally. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

Graduation image by BigStockPhoto.com.