That is one of the few questions that you can honestly answer with “Almost all of it.” Boston is the education capital of the world. New York City has plenty of good schools of course but it can’t compete with its little sibling to the North.
There are over 100 colleges and universities in the greater Boston area not to mention all of the great prep schools and public high schools.
Here is a tiny sample of just the colleges and universities in the immediate Boston/Cambridge area:
Harvard
MIT
Boston University
Boston College
Bentley University
Berklee College of Music
Boston Conservatory
Brandeis University
Cambridge College
Emerson College
New England Conservatory
Northeastern University
Tufts University
The land was granted to their ancestors by the Crown, then passed down through the generations. Having estates that have been in one’s family since before the Revolution is a definate mark of “old money”. You can find things like that up & down the East Coast (ie the original 13 Colonies); especially in Virginia & Maryland.
Columbia/Barnard
NYU
Fordham
Cooper Union
NYIT
Pace University
Juliard
Pratt Institute
LIU
School of Visual Arts
The New School
Yeshiva University
Marymount
FIT
New York Academy of Art
And then there’s CUNY, the largest city university system in the world:
City College, Hunter College, Baruch College, Brooklyn College, Queens College, and a half dozen others. And the six CUNY community colleges, which educate more than a quarter million students annually. There’s the CUNY graduate center, journalism school, and law school.
That list doesn’t include the half-dozen elite New York City public prep schools, including Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, widely regarded as being among the best high schools in the country, nor the dozens of private prep schools, art schools, performing arts schools, and other educational institutions. It also doesn’t include New York City’s three public library systems, which individually are all among the largest in the country (and which, if they combined, would be dwarfed only by the Library of Congress and one or two university libraries.)
It also doesn’t include the fact that New York is home to three of the world’s largest art museums, the American Museum of Natural History (dinosaurs!) the highly underrated Brooklyn Museum, and most of the prestigious performance venues in the country.
That listing barely scratches the surface of what’s in New York City; forget the Greater New York City area, which includes Hofstra, Adelphi, Bard, SUNY Stony Brook, SUNY Downstate Medical Center, and others.
Saying “Boston is the education capital of the world” is like saying Vancouver is “the movie capital of the world.” They may make a lot of pictures up there, but it sure ain’t Hollywood.
New York state basically has four divisions. There’s New York City itself. There’s the Hudson Valley region and Long Island, which are essentially extensions of New York City. There’s the midstate region, which runs from Albany to Buffalo - these are all of the old factory towns along the Erie Canal and such. And there’s northern New York, which is rural and agricultural - the western end of New England (or the southern edge of Quebec). People in these small Adirondack villages don’t relate to Binghampton and Utica any more than they do to Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Well, there’s New York, and then there’s New York, and then there’s New York . . .
Nobody would ever think New York City or its environs are part of New England, but there are some Upstate areas that are indistinguishable from Vermont. And there are also some parts of Suffolk County that would qualify as well. Not, however, anywhere near Lake Erie.
I am not a big Boston fan but saying that New York City is superior to Boston in terms of educational opportunities is a delusional grandiose fantasy. Columbia is great for a 2nd tier Ivy League school but it isn’t Harvard. No one has an MIT except Boston (technically in the people’s republic of Cambridge across a small river but the same thing). NYU is similar to Boston University in terms of demographics but Boston has multiple levels of backups on that level as well. Stick with the Yankees because that is your best bet in terms of winning. NYC doesn’t have the land area to devote to American style colleges and doesn’t do that well overall except for maybe Juliard which is unique. The San Francisco area is a better competitor for Boston in that regard.
I’m duly impressed Boston has some very noteworthy schools - though in fairness it’d be truer to say Cambridge does, but close enough - but lots of big metropolitan areas have some excellent schools. And sure, it has little colleges, but again, so does any big city.
But again… does anyone outside Boston call it “The education capital of the world?” That’s the real test.
I tried Googling it. I was unsurprised to find that the actual world leader in both post-secondary institutions and students was London. I can’t find anyone calling Boston the “educational capital of the world” but I’m still looking.
That is because the nickname for Boston is “The Hub” which is short for “The Hub of the Universe” and it isn’t really meant tongue in cheek either. I just barfed a little while I was typing that. Being the education capital of the world is pretty incidental and not very noteworthy in comparison.
I am not from the Boston area and my family certainly isn’t. They have called it the education capital of the world so the answer to your question is literally yes. I just came up with some google searched where people said the same thing and I also learned about the cow pie throwing capital of the world as well. There are more than enough capitals to go around.
Ugh, I want to punch something, like a puppy or a small child, whenever I see that nickname used outside of a joke. Is Boston trying to make everyone else hate it? (I live in Cambridge but I know people will hate me too. I mean, when the people across the river in the HUB OF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE think we’re full of ourselves over here, the prospects aren’t good.) Fortunately it mostly seems to find active usage only in newspaper headlines, where apparently it’s worth saving three letters by writing “Hub” instead of “Boston.”
A Wisconsin/midwestern thing, but Connecticut? Strange ways. What part of CT is that from? I sat in the governors chair in every field trip, have scores of those awesome pencils from the Peabody (you know, the ones with little shiny rocks in them), and had youthful imagination crushed when I found out Gillette’s Castle wasn’t owned by an ‘real’ knight. But cheese on pie? Maybe in Bizzaro New England …
