Seminole outpaces the nation in college grads while neighboring Lake lags the state

Central Florida's college graduates aren't spread evenly across the map. They are concentrated in Seminole and Orange counties and much thinner on the ground in Osceola and Lake.

Seminole and Orange clear both the state and national marks for adults with at least a bachelor's degree. Osceola and Lake counties, to the south and west, fall short of both. Those are the findings of the Census Bureau's 2020–2024 American Community Survey, the newest estimates available.

A region split down the middle

Seminole County leads the region. An estimated 42.7% of adults there hold a bachelor's degree or higher. Orange County follows at 39.3%, or nearly 2 in 5 adults.

Florida as a whole sits at 34.1%, and the U.S. at 35.7%. That puts Orange County 5.2 percentage points ahead of the state, a gap well beyond the survey's margin of error.

The picture flips outside the core. In Osceola, 29.8% of adults have a bachelor's degree, about 3 in 10. That leaves the county 4.4 percentage points below the state.

Lake County is lower still at 27.8%, trailing Florida by 6.3 percentage points. Both shortfalls are larger than the margin of error.

Line the region's counties up against Florida, the nation and peer counties around Tampa, Charlotte, Austin, San Antonio and Las Vegas, and Seminole ranks third. Orange is right behind in fourth. Lake lands 10th, near the bottom of the list.

How Tampa and the Sun Belt compare

Down the interstate, Tampa's Hillsborough County comes in at 38.1%. That is close to Orange County's share and below Seminole's.

The comparison is less flattering farther afield. In Travis County, Texas, which includes Austin, 56.6% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher. In Mecklenburg County, N.C., which takes in Charlotte, the share is nearly half, at 49.2%.

Orange County trails Travis by 17.2 percentage points and Mecklenburg by 9.9 percentage points. Even Seminole, the region's best showing, sits behind both.

Measured against the national rate, the region's counties land on opposite sides. Seminole and Orange sit above the U.S. share, while Osceola and Lake sit below it.

A big campus in the middle of the map

Orange County is home to the University of Central Florida, the largest university by enrollment in Florida (Orlando, FL) and one of the largest in the nation (Orlando, FL). Its main campus sits east of downtown Orlando, next to one of the top research parks in the nation (Orlando, FL).

The survey counts degrees by where adults live, not where they earned them. So the figures can't say how many of the region's degree holders came out of UCF, or how many studied somewhere else and moved here for work.

What they do show is the geography. The state's largest university sits in Orange County, and the counties with the region's lowest shares of college graduates, Osceola and Lake, sit right next door.

About the data

We used the Census Bureau's American Community Survey estimates covering 2020 through 2024 for the share of adults with a bachelor's degree or higher, using the adult age group the bureau reports for education. We compared Orange, Seminole, Osceola and Lake counties with Florida, the U.S. and peer counties: Hillsborough (Tampa), Mecklenburg (Charlotte), Travis (Austin), Bexar (San Antonio) and Clark (Las Vegas). We tested differences against Florida using the bureau's published margins of error.

• These are survey estimates with margins of error, so small differences between places, such as Orange and Hillsborough counties, may not be meaningful.
• The estimates pool responses from 2020 through 2024 and describe that whole period rather than a single year.
• The data counts degrees by where adults live today and can't say where they earned their degrees or why attainment differs between counties.

Bachelor's degree or higher: adults whose highest completed education is a bachelor's degree or a graduate or professional degree, measured among the adult age group the Census Bureau uses for education statistics. American Community Survey: an ongoing Census Bureau survey that produces yearly estimates on education, income, housing and other topics.

Sources

• U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey: Educational Attainment for the Population 25 Years and Over (ACS 5-year 2020–2024), latest period 2024; retrieved Oct. 17, 2026. Data