Cities: Skylines 2

Education is a major service that players must provide their citizens in Cities: Skylines 2. While nothing immediately bad will happen like with bad police or fire coverage, players need highly educated citizens to work well-paying jobs in high-end businesses. And when citizens and businesses are all wealthy, they pay more in taxes.

Education buildings are the way to get the ball rolling in Cities: Skylines 2. While educated citizens can move to the city and take on high-paying jobs immediately, players must build schools and colleges if they want their population to become truly wealthy.

Education Buildings

Cities Skylines 2 Development Education Research — I wonder if anyone ever reads these?

Players unlock access to education and research buildings at the second milestone, Small Village. The elementary school and high school are available automatically, but players must spend development points to unlock all higher education buildings. Players should also be aware that each education building takes up more space than the last: the elementary school is relatively small, while the special Technical and Medical Universities take up vast amounts of space.

Each building upgrades a student's education by one level. However, some buildings require their students to be in a certain age group. If a citizen is too old to visit a school, they'll never be able to get a higher education than they already have.

Building	Education Provided	Student Age	Special Bonus
Elementary School	Poorly Educated	Child	Child Well-Being in nearby residences
High School	Educated	Teen
College	Well Educated	Teen, Adult
University	Highly Educated	Adult
Technical University	Highly Educated	Adult	+10% Industrial Efficiency +10% Office Efficiency
Medical University	Highly Educated	Adult	-25% Recovery Failures +10% Hospital Efficiency Can also function as a clinic with Practice Clinic upgrade

Each education building can also accept an extension wing, an upgrade that doesn't increase the building's size. An extension lets the building house 500 more students, and it's always cheaper than constructing a new building. Players should always make sure they're expanding their education buildings as they go.

The two specialized universities provide unique, city-wide bonuses when players build them. They otherwise act the same as a normal university when it comes to teaching students. However, players can only build one of each special university in a city. Likewise, the advanced research buildings provide city bonuses but only once each.

Many education buildings also come with a library upgrade. A library increases the size of the building, but it can reduce the chance that a student will drop out and fail to improve their education. However, the dropout rate will be minuscule if players can keep their citizens happy and their education buildings fully funded.

Education Access

Cities Skylines 2 Education Elementary — An elementary school has special rules in Cities: Skylines 2.

In the first game, education attendance was based on whether citizens lived close enough to each building and whether that building had enough capacity. In Cities: Skylines 2, players can place education buildings anywhere and citizens will attend if they have enough time and money. However, the education info view still has red and green roads.

The only building that interacts with road color is the elementary school. If an elementary school is nearby, it provides a special Well-Being bonus to families with young children. This bonus is useful, but it has no connection to whether or not the school is educating enough children. In fact, players can build every education building in a special university district and students of all ages will show up to learn. The Well-Being bonus is mostly to encourage players to distribute elementary schools realistically throughout the city.

Education, Jobs, and Taxes

Cities Skylines 2 Taxation Panel — The taxation menu in Cities: Skylines 2.

As mentioned earlier, a citizen with a better education can qualify for better jobs, and better jobs give them more money to spend. Citizens who have more money to spare will save it and can then spend it on upgrading their residence. Upgraded residences can house more families and increase property value, which means higher taxes paid to the player.

Players can also interact with education levels by taxing each citizen based on their education. The game defaults to a flat tax for every education level, but players can increase taxes on highly educated citizens to take advantage of their greater average wealth, or they can reduce taxes on higher education levels to encourage citizens to seek out education and eventually upgrade their residences.

Another way education improves taxation is through medium and high-density demand. Each residential density has its own demand bar, and the main way to drive demand for high-density residences is by increasing the number of students. It's the one major difference between the three types.

Education also pays for itself, at least to some extent. While elementary and high school are mandatory and free, citizens must pay a fee to attend colleges and universities. This helps to offset the cost of higher education. Unfortunately, players can't adjust education fees the way they can with other services.

Cities: Skylines 2 is available now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.

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