Who woulda thunk it?

I have always idealized Boston as the fount of intelligence and wisdom, with all those distinguished institutions of higher learning: Harvard, MIT, Brandeis, Tufts, U. Mass, etc. I know, I'm lumping Cambridge in with Boston, which makes a difference to the locals; but to us outside admirers, it's just two sides of a river.

Whatever . . . . . the Boston area has always to me meant high levels of education, with literally hundreds of thousands of college and university students inhabiting the place.

Imagine my surprise this morning, reading an article in the AJC about comparative rates for water/sewer services in various cities of a comparable size to Atlanta, to discover that

Atlanta has a higher percentage of its citizens who are college graduates than Boston.

What does that have to do with sewer rates, you ask? There was a chart comparing eight cities on various demographic scales. Atlanta actually had the highest rate of college grads (43.6%) of any of the eight except Seattle (53.5%). Boston came in at 40.3%.

Now, I should emphasize that this was about populations within the city limits, not metropolitan areas. Which means that the Cambridge side of the Charles River is not included, nor are our northern suburbs. So all those Harvard-MIT folks aren't included in Boston's stats.

But still -- more college grads in Atlanta than Boston?!! Now that's something.

P.S.: We also came out ahead in water/sewer rates ($109.08) compared to Boston ($80.42) and behind Seattle ($113.10). Now that's an interesting correlation: the higher the rate of college grads, the higher the sewer fees. Hmmmm.

Ralph