Earning a high school diploma is one of the first things many teenagers who have entered into adulthood achieve. Some students graduate early, some graduate right on time, some quit school and earn an equivalency degree or a GED, and some never finish high school at all.

In the state of Colorado, there are a handful of cities and towns with over 10% of residents who never earned a high school diploma, and the 25 cities and towns with the highest percentage of residents without degrees only drop that percentage to about 8.7%.

What Do These Colorado Cities and Towns Have in Common?

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Let's take a look at the statistics and see if we can figure out what correlation these high percentages have to the Colorado towns.

If you look at the top five cities with the least amount of diplomas, all but one have a population under 1,500 with three of them having populations under 750. In fact, with the exception of cities in the Denver metro area, many of these places have populations only in the thousands or even merely in the hundreds.

If you take out the Denver metro area, the largest town in Colorado with a high percentage of residents without diplomas is Sterling. In case you're not familiar, Sterling is located in the upper northeast corner of the state, almost at the Nebraska border.

That being said, the fact that easy access to higher education nearby may be a factor, as well as the fact that many of the towns on the list are in rural areas with low populations, or are tourist towns like Silverthorne and Avon.

Keep scrolling to see all 25 of the Colorado towns with the lowest percentage of residents with high school diplomas, beginning with number 25:

Ranked: 25 Colorado Cities with the Least High School Diplomas

These Colorado cities have the highest percentage of residents that never earned a High School diploma or equivalent.

Gallery Credit: Nate Wilde

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