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Mountain Lakes is the most educated town in Morris County. An estimated 85.9 percent of borough residents age 25 and older hold at least a bachelor’s degree, according to Shop Morris County’s analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s newest American Community Survey 5-year estimates, covering 2020 to 2024. Countywide the figure is 57.8 percent, compared with 43.6 percent for New Jersey and 35.7 percent for the United States.
Morris County’s rate is essentially tied with Somerset County’s for the highest among New Jersey’s 21 counties, and 27 of Morris County’s 39 towns are above 50 percent.
The top 10 towns for bachelor’s degrees
Ranked by the share of adults 25 and older with a bachelor’s, master’s, professional or doctoral degree: 1. Mountain Lakes, 85.9 percent. 2. Chatham Borough, 83.7 percent. 3. Chatham Township, 80.8 percent. 4. Mendham Borough, 80.7 percent. 5. Mendham Township, 77.4 percent. 6. Madison, 74.1 percent. 7. Morris Township, 73.6 percent. 8. Harding, 73.6 percent. 9. Morris Plains, 72.2 percent. 10. Chester Township, 70.1 percent. Florham Park (69.9 percent) and Montville (68.8 percent) just miss the list.
Graduate degrees
Mountain Lakes also leads on advanced degrees: 45.9 percent of adults there hold a master’s, professional or doctoral degree, nearly double the county rate of 24.1 percent. Chatham Borough (42.1 percent) and Chatham Township (41.2 percent) follow. Mendham Borough has the highest share with a professional degree such as law or medicine, 11.1 percent, and Mountain Lakes has the highest share of doctorates, 7.1 percent.
By the headcount
Because it is so large, Parsippany-Troy Hills has the most college graduates of any Morris County town: about 25,567 adults, or 60.5 percent of residents 25 and older. Morris Township (12,354), Randolph (11,961) and Montville (11,326) each top 11,000. Across the county, an estimated 211,897 adults hold at least a bachelor’s degree.
How we compiled this
We used Census table B15003, Educational Attainment for the Population 25 Years and Over, downloaded from the Census Bureau’s ACS summary file for every Morris County municipality, and added together the bachelor’s, master’s, professional and doctorate categories. The 2020 to 2024 estimates, released in January 2026, are the most recent available for individual towns. Because they come from a survey, each figure has a margin of error; in the smallest towns it can run 5 to 10 percentage points, so the towns at the top of this list are best read as a cluster rather than a strict order.
Curious what life looks like in the county’s top-ranked town? Our guide to things to do in Mountain Lakes covers the lakes, trails and historic walking tour, and our guide to all 39 Morris County towns covers the rest.
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