Interactive map shows education levels of Sonoma County residents and beyond

A good number of Sonoma County residents may be earning six figure salaries, but how many of them obtained a graduate degree on their way to the top?

Kyle Walker, an assistant professor of geography at Texas Christian University has created an interactive map that plots educational attainment by city for individuals age 25 and up. Using Census data from the latest American Community Survey (2001-2015), Walker marks scholastic achievement by a series of colored dots. Blue indicates a graduate degree, green stands for a bachelor’s, yellow represents some college, orange shows high school and red marks less than high school. Each dot indicates between 25 and 500 individuals.

Zooming in on Santa Rosa, the map seems to show a majority of residents 25 and up receiving some college education. All colors are represented throughout the city, but east of Highway 101 there appears to be more bachelor’s and master’s degrees (although that region is more sparsely populated).

In comparison, Palo Alto (the home of Stanford University) is marked heavily with blue dots, showing that the majority of job holders in Silicon Valley hold a graduate degree or higher.

Smaller cities in Sonoma County are less telling. With each dot representing between 25 and 500 people, there are fewer results displayed.

Click through our gallery above to see how each city measured up. Visit Walker’s website to learn more.