City rankings
Most Educated Cities in Hawaii
East Honolulu ranks #1 in Hawaii for most educated cities at 59.9%.
This ranking orders all 26 qualifying Hawaii cities by bachelor degree share, computed from the named federal field or time-series described below. It is one of 9 transparent ranking lenses Areazine publishes for Hawaii, each answering one direct question from official data. Compare East Honolulu's standing against every other Hawaii city ranked below.
Data updated 2026-08-21
- 26
- Cities ranked
- 59.9%
- #1 East Honolulu
- 10.8%
- Lowest, Nanakuli
What this Hawaii ranking shows
According to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates, the CDC PLACES population-level health analysis, and the CMS Hospital Compare quality data, Areazine ranks U.S. cities across more than 19,000 incorporated places, census-designated places, and consolidated city-county governments. State-level city rankings combine these federal datasets to produce intra-state comparisons across demographics, economics, health outcomes, and hospital quality.
East Honolulu leads 26 Hawaii cities at 59.9%, while Nanakuli sits at the bottom with 10.8% - a total spread of 49.1% on bachelor degree share. The top 5 occupy 48% of that range, indicating a moderate distribution with meaningful steps between rungs.
The median Hawaii city in this list sits at 31.3%, 28.6% behind East Honolulu. See our methodology for ranking construction, data vintage, refresh cadence, and the federal upstream tables we join, and triangulate via the 8 other Hawaii rankings below, cities that lead on multiple lenses are the most robust signals.
Top 5 - Most Educated Cities
| Rank | City | bachelor degree share | Population |
|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | East Honolulu | 59.9% | 50K |
| #2 | Mililani Town | 43.8% | 28K |
| #3 | Pearl City | 39% | 48K |
| #4 | Kaneohe | 37.1% | 35K |
| #5 | Makakilo | 36.3% | 18K |
Does bachelor degree share track with city size?
Most Educated Cities vs. population, top 25 ranked cities
Most Educated Cities 26
More Hawaii Rankings 8
Reading this Hawaii ranking responsibly
Single-metric rankings are useful precisely because they are honest about what they measure. A "highest income" ranking does not tell you that the top-ranked city is the best place to live in Hawaii; it tells you that, among cities of population ten thousand and above in Hawaii that have a published median household income field in the most recent American Community Survey five-year estimates, this city has the highest such value. That precise definition matters, because composite "best places" lists from real-estate marketing sites and lifestyle magazines often combine income with subjective weights on schools, walkability, and amenities, producing a score whose components are not disclosed and whose ordering is not reproducible. Areazine's editorial commitment is to keep the underlying field, source, and vintage visible so the reader can audit any rank in this list against the canonical federal record.
Cross-checking against other rankings is a useful sanity test. A city that appears in the top ten on three or more different rankings, for example, highest income, most educated, and lowest poverty, is showing a robust signal across multiple independent dimensions. A city that appears in the top ten on only one ranking and middling on the others is showing a narrower signal, often driven by a single statistical artifact (a small population pulling the per-capita measure, a recent acquisition spike inflating median home value, an outlier survey year). The other nine Hawaii rankings linked above provide that cross-check at zero extra effort.
Data Sources
Population and economic data from the Census Bureau American Community Survey (2024 5-year estimates). Health data from the CDC PLACES (2023). Ranking computations use U.S. Census Bureau reference geographies. Crime statistics, where referenced, originate from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting program (also accessible via the Crime Data Explorer).
Read our methodology - how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.