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

Top 5 Hawaii cities ranked by bachelor degree share
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

Source: U.S. Census Bureau (population), bachelor degree share per methodology 2×2 strategic matrix plotting 25 entities by Population (X) and bachelor degree share (Y), with a crosshair dividing the plot into four quadrants. Large & strongSmall & strongLarge & weakSmall & weak 010,00020,00030,00040,00050,00060,000 020406080 Population bachelor degree share
Source: U.S. Census Bureau (population), bachelor degree share per methodology

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).