Education across the US varies significantly across regions and state lines, but one place dominates national rankings for the opportunities it offers students.
Business Insider recently ranked the most and least educated US states based on the share of adults 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree or higher, using 2024 Census data.
Massachusetts ranked highest, with 48.3% of adults holding a bachelor’s degree or higher, and it also had the highest share of adults with advanced degrees, with 22.6% having a professional and graduate degree.
That means nearly half of Massachusetts adults have a bachelor’s degree, and more than 1 in 5 have advanced further in their academic path, earning a professional or graduate degree.
Massachusetts is home to some of the country’s top universities
The state has a high education density: Hubs like Cambridge and Boston have long been known as higher education powerhouses in the US and are home to institutions such as Harvard, MIT, Boston University, Northeastern University, and Tufts University, among many others.
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Together, those schools make Massachusetts a magnet for students, professors, researchers, startups, and employers. They also support the state’s economy and its concentration of fields that prize advanced degrees, including biotech, healthcare, finance, education, engineering, and technology.
The state stands out in K-12 education
The state’s education pipeline starts long before college, with the state budget prioritizing funding for its rank-topping education.
In 2024, Massachusetts spent about $22 billion on public-school expenditures, or $23,165 per student, according to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. The state ranked seventh-highest in per-student expenditures for elementary and secondary education that year, according to Census data.
This investment in schools is visible in national rankings. In 2025, the Massachusetts Academy of Math & Science, one of the highest-achieving public high schools in the state, ranked third among all public schools nationwide.
The elementary and secondary education in the state then funnels into the public and private colleges and universities.
In the 2024-2025 school year, about 65% of Massachusetts’ high school graduates who enrolled in college after graduation did so at Massachusetts colleges and universities, according to the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
Massachusetts’ emphasis on higher education aligns with its economy, which is driven by ambitious workers in highly skilled fields — and ranked as the best state economy in the US.
Massachusetts also has some of the nation’s highest-earning households
In 2024, the state had the highest median household income among all 50 states at $104,828, ranking slightly ahead of New Jersey and Maryland, which had similar median household incomes.
For a lot of Massachusetts residents, however, a large portion of their household income goes towards affording to live in the state, which has the third-highest housing burden in the US.
On average, renters spend 51.5% of their income on housing, while homeowners spend 33.7%, making the state less affordable than other states with similar median incomes, such as New Jersey and Maryland.
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Some of the state’s most famous institutions also produce some of the nation’s highest-earning graduates. MIT topped the list, with former students having a median income of $162,000 four years after graduation, according to Department of Education College Scorecard data.
The result is an economy influenced by education: Massachusetts is home to top universities and research institutions, strong educational outcomes, and well-paying roles that lean on advanced knowledge.
Together, these factors help explain why the state scores highest in both degree attainment and household income.
