The Actual U.S. States with More Colleges Than Jails

I stumbled into an article from Studee about the U.S. States with more colleges than jails and prisons, today. The presentation is disheartening, in that the vast majority of U.S. States are afflicted with large quantities of jails and prisons.

This post is a work in progress.

While I found it interesting, I also found it inaccurate. Their article described a college as one where an individual can get a four-year degree. However, that doesn’t necessarily describe what a college is, and thus leaves out a few states.

Using the same data sources¹², I re-compiled the list to include schools that offer associates degrees, too. These are mostly community and technical colleges, and by all measures, are colleges.

Tangentially, I also introduced a new variant of the data, including schools that offer certifications. Not every profession needs a college degree.

Notes

• The original article also reviews incarceration numbers and incarceration per capita and how those stats correlate to the number of college-education people within a state.
• When adding certificate schools, we see almost half of the United States shift to the other side of the scale. This is good, but we shouldn’t have to massage the stats that way.
• I ultimately started down this rabbit hole because I took issue with how Studee defined a college. I felt some states were being displayed and measured incorrectly. Ultimately, adding 2-year schools only added a half-dozen states to the positive college-jail ratio.

The U.S. States That Have More Colleges than Jails and Prisons

The U.S. States that Have More Colleges and Cert Schools than Jails and Prisons

Raw Data

Two- and Four-year Comparison

State	Jails/Prisons	Schools	Difference +/i
Alabama	147	60	-87
Alaska	27	8	-19
Arizona	36	69	33
Arkansas	95	53	-42
California	147	450	303
Colorado	81	62	-19
Connecticut	14	39	25
Delaware	4	7	3
D.C.	2	19	17
Florida	230	182	-48
Georgia	217	110	-107
Hawaii	8	17	9
Idaho	46	17	-29
Illinois	120	155	35
Indiana	110	69	-41
Iowa	105	55	-50
Kansas	106	62	-44
Kentucky	96	59	-37
Louisiana	120	57	-63
Maine	19	29	10
Maryland	49	53	4
Massachusetts	35	106	71
Michigan	108	88	-20
Minnesota	92	84	-8
Mississippi	92	34	-58
Missouri	139	96	-43
Montana	42	25	-17
Nebraska	73	33	-40
Nevada	36	22	-14
New Hampshire	16	25	9
New Jersey	28	88	60
New Mexico	39	36	-3
New York	116	302	186
North Carolina	157	135	-22
North Dakota	27	20	-7
Ohio	133	164	31
Oklahoma	117	50	-67
Oregon	50	51	1
Pennsylvania	97	197	100
Rhode Island	7	14	7
South Carolina	71	66	-5
South Dakota	32	22	-10
Tennessee	123	85	-38
Texas	313	239	-74
Utah	29	24	-5
Vermont	8	16	8
Virginia	97	108	11
Washington	71	74	3
West Virginia	24	42	18
Wisconsin	100	67	-33
Wyoming	28	9	-19

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Footnotes

1. https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/ ↩

2. https://nicic.gov/state-statistics/2019 ↩