US cities with the biggest bachelor's-degree gains since 1990

The share of American adults with a bachelor's degree has roughly doubled since 1990, but the gain is not even. Some cities barely moved; others added 30 or more percentage points. Across 843 cities with 50,000 or more residents, the typical city went from 20.2% bachelor's-degree-or-higher in 1990 to 35.1% in the latest ACS, a gain of +14.9%.

Fulshear, Texas leads the table at +60.1%, having moved from 14.7% in 1990 to 74.8% today.

#	Place	1990	Latest	Change
1	Fulshear, Texas	14.7%	74.8%	+60.1%
2	Holly Springs, North Carolina	8.0%	67.3%	+59.3%
3	Celina, Texas	11.1%	64.3%	+53.2%
4	Dublin, California	24.1%	69.8%	+45.7%
5	Frisco, Texas	22.3%	67.5%	+45.3%
6	Hoboken, New Jersey	39.7%	82.6%	+42.9%
7	Bentonville, Arkansas	12.4%	55.3%	+42.9%
8	Westfield, Indiana	18.3%	59.8%	+41.5%
9	Leander, Texas	12.6%	53.3%	+40.6%
10	Draper, Utah	11.6%	51.9%	+40.3%
11	Somerville, Massachusetts	30.9%	69.4%	+38.5%
12	Cedar Park, Texas	17.2%	55.6%	+38.4%
13	Lehi, Utah	11.6%	50.0%	+38.3%
14	Spring Hill, Tennessee	12.4%	50.3%	+37.9%
15	Marana, Arizona	10.2%	47.8%	+37.5%
16	Collierville, Tennessee	25.6%	62.5%	+36.9%
17	Queen Creek, Arizona	8.4%	45.0%	+36.6%
18	Medford, Massachusetts	23.7%	59.8%	+36.1%
19	Franklin, Tennessee	28.7%	64.5%	+35.7%
20	Royal Oak, Michigan	28.4%	64.1%	+35.7%
21	Santa Clara, California	30.8%	65.9%	+35.2%
22	McKinney, Texas	19.0%	54.1%	+35.1%
23	Little Elm, Texas	9.5%	44.2%	+34.7%
24	Apex, North Carolina	34.9%	69.5%	+34.6%
25	Redmond, Washington	40.9%	75.3%	+34.3%

Key findings

• Fulshear, Texas leads the list at +60.1%.
• The 25th-ranked city on this list — Redmond, Washington — shows +34.3%.
• Across the full universe of 843 city rows with both data points, the typical change was +13.6%.
• The top gainers concentrate in Texas (7 of the top 25), Tennessee (3 of the top 25), North Carolina (2 of the top 25).

Where the pattern sits geographically

Texas (7 of the top 25), Tennessee (3 of the top 25), North Carolina (2 of the top 25) together account for the bulk of the top of this list. Click any city above to open its CensusEasy page, which carries the full historical time series for every metric we publish (income, education, housing, commute, race composition, industry mix), plus its rank within its state and its national percentile on each metric.

How to read this

This ranking is sorted by absolute change, not by percentage change. Absolute change is the figure that lines up with how readers experience these numbers in everyday life ("the typical household here earns $X more than in 1990"). The percentage-change framing surfaces a different set of city rows — usually places that started from a low base — and we publish those rankings separately on the rankings pages.

A single metric never tells the whole story. The smallest gain on this list can reflect either change in the same population staying in place, or compositional change as some residents leave and others arrive. Companion studies on poverty, education, and housing cost together describe the fuller picture.

Cities at the top of this list cluster around two patterns: tech-and-research towns where the highly educated already concentrated and continued to in-migrate, and post-industrial cities that successfully pivoted toward white-collar employment.