San Antonio Named a Top Spot for College Grads

San Antonio named a top spot for college grads San Antonio Business Journal - by Tricia Lynn Silva

Date: Tuesday, June 7, 2011, 12:07pm CDT

The Alamo City has made the list once again — this time, as one of the top 10 cities for post-college life.

Livability.com, a national Web site featuring information on what it calls America’s 500 best places to live — has included San Antonio on its top 10 list of cities for college graduates.

In choosing which cities would make the grade, Livability.com looked at such factors as job opportunities, salaries, population age and night life and cultural scenes.

This college-grad list if one of several featured on livability.com’s Web site. The site also breaks down the country’s top 10 staycation cities, the 10 great hiking trails and the best unexpected beer cities — to name a few.

The one thing all of these lists have in common is Livability.com’s focus on highlighting what it calls the “places in between the big cities.” Major metros like New York City, Chicago or San Francisco are not livability.com’s area of interest.

Livability.com listed job opportunities in manufacturing and service professions, a thriving downtown scene, a large young adult population and great Mexican restaurants as pluses for the Alamo City.

Livability.com also included some vital statistics on each of the cities — including median household income, $54,818 for San Antonio; the percentage of white collar and blue collar jobs, 76 percent and 24 percent, respectively; and the percentage of the population with bachelor’s degrees and master’s degrees, 15 percent and 10 percent, respectively.

Joining San Antonio on Livability.com’s list were Nashville; Provo, Utah; Tucson; Charlotte; Kansas City, Mo.; Lincoln, Neb.; San Jose, Calif.; and fellow Texas town, Fort Worth.

In terms of median household income, San Antonio’s was higher than several of the other cities on the top 10 list, per Livability.com’s analysis.

San Antonio’s percentage of college graduates, however, is much lower than the other cities on the list. The one exception is Fort Worth, where 9 percent of its population has a master’s degree. The North Texas town, however, still has a higher percentage of residents with a bachelor’s degree — 17 percent to San Antonio’s 15 percent.