Printable VersionLake Havasu City has topped a list it probably would rather have stayed off of: worst-educated city.
To be accurate, the Forbes ranking applies to the Lake Havasu City-Kingman metropolitan statistical area, which encompasses all of Mohave County.
Forbes based its rankings on the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2007 American Community Survey, which found that the percentage of people age 25 and over in the county who held a bachelor’s degree or higher was 11.5 percent. That number was 25.3 percent for the state of Arizona and 27.5 percent for the nation.
“It certainly is tough to see and the interesting thing is grouping Kingman and Lake Havasu City in there together,” said Gary Kellogg, head of the Partnership for Economic Development, which is charged with attracting businesses to the city.
“It would have been fairer to break out the two communities,” he said.
In 2000, the last year for which individual city data is available, the percentage of adults in Mohave County with a bachelor’s degree or more was 9.9 compared to 13.2 percent for Lake Havasu City and 13.9 percent for Kingman.
“Whether it’s 10 percent or 13 percent, the point is that it’s low and the question is what are we going to do about that?” Lake Havasu Unified School District Superintendent Gail Malay said.
“I just think our community needs to understand we have to work on that because we’re never going to attract the kind of businesses we want without at least some college-educated workforce,” she said.
Mohave Community College Chancellor Michael Kearns said MCC officials were already aware of the county’s low percentage of college graduates. They were alerted to the numbers by a 2005 report to the Governor’s P-20 Council that showed 21.3 percent of county residents held an associate’s degree or higher versus 35.3 percent of Arizona residents as a whole.
Kearns attributed the county’s low college graduation rate to several factors, including educational funding that’s ranked near the bottom of states for years, and the region’s dependence on industries — such as hospitality and recreation — that don’t have a place for college-educated people.
“The lower rankings historically say a lot about the economic climate in the area, the jobs in the area, all the things that go with higher education... For master’s (degree) level people, there’re hardly any jobs here,” Kearns said.
The lack of college-educated residents in turn discourages industries that employ those workers from relocating to the county, Kearns said.
“We talk to the cities’ economic development people all the time, and they tell us when companies look into coming here, the first thing they ask is where’s the workforce, what’s the education level,” Kearns said. “So it’s a chicken and the egg kind of thing,” he said.
Lake Havasu City’s low college-education rate, “hasn’t presented any major obstacles to attracting businesses at this point but it will present difficulties in the future,” Kellogg said.
“Maybe (this) just reinforces why we should continue as a community to work harder on things like the JTED, and next year we have another (school budget) override ... Education is the key,” Kellogg said.
He also spoke of the importance of “working diligently” to establish a four-year university in the city that would be considered an amenity by better-educated workers.
“Professionals who come here want to have their ongoing education,” Kellogg said. “There’s no instant cure here [but] you look at the communities that were ranked high, there were universities (there),” he said.
One positive side effect of the economic downturn could actually be growth in the county’s college-education rate.
Low-wage workers who’ve found themselves early casualties of the recession and are looking for a way to improve their lot often turn to higher education, Kearns said.
“We see a big enrollment increase every time the economy goes down,” he said.
You may contact the reporter at dparker@havasunews.com.
At a glance
America’s best- and worst-educated cities
Best-educated
1. Boulder, Colo.
2. Ann Arbor, Mich.
3. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, D.C.-Va.-Md.-W.V.
4. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif.
5. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, Calif.
6. Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, Conn.
7. Charlottesville, Va.
8. Durham, N.C.
9. Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, Mass.-N.H.
10. Fort Collins-Loveland, Colo.
Worst-educated
1. Lake Havasu City-Kingman, Ariz.
2. Vineland-Millville-Bridgeton, N.J.
3. Merced, Calif.
4. Visalia-Porterville, Calif.
5. Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux, La.
6. Yuma, Ariz.
7. Bakersfield, Calif.
8. Ottawa-Streator, Ill.
9. Fort Smith, Ark.-Okla.
10. McAllen-Edinburg, Mission, Texaswors
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Source: Forbes.com
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