Cities, towns, and counties

Main article: Local Government

v t e Largest cities or towns in Massachusetts Source:[266]
Rank	Name	County	Pop.
1	Boston	Suffolk	645,966
2	Worcester	Worcester	182,544
3	Springfield	Hampden	153,703
4	Lowell	Middlesex	108,861
5	Cambridge	Middlesex	107,289
6	New Bedford	Bristol	95,078
7	Brockton	Plymouth	94,089
8	Quincy	Norfolk	93,494
9	Lynn	Essex	91,589
10	Fall River	Bristol	88,697

There are 50 cities and 301 towns in Massachusetts, grouped into 14 counties.^[267] The fourteen counties, moving roughly from west to east, are Berkshire, Franklin, Hampshire, Hampden, Worcester, Middlesex, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Bristol, Plymouth, Barnstable, Dukes, and Nantucket. Eleven communities which call themselves "towns" are, by law, cities since they have traded the town meeting form of government for a mayor-council or manager-council form.^[268]
Boston is the state capital and largest city in Massachusetts. The population of the city proper is 645,966,^[269] and Greater Boston, with a population of 4,628,910, is the 10th largest metropolitan area in the nation.^[270] Other cities with a population over 100,000 include Worcester, Springfield, Lowell, and Cambridge. Plymouth is the largest municipality in the state by land area.^[267]
Massachusetts, along with the five other New England states, features the local governmental structure known as the New England town.^[271] In this structure, incorporated towns—as opposed to townships or counties—hold many of the responsibilities and powers of local government.^[271] Most of the county governments were abolished by the state of Massachusetts beginning in 1997 including Middlesex County,^[272] the largest county in the state by population.^[273][274] The voters of these now defunct counties elect only Sheriffs and Registers of Deeds, who are part of the state government. Other counties have been reorganized, and a few still retain county councils.^[275]

Education

Harvard University and MIT are both widely regarded as in the top handful of universities worldwide for academic research in various disciplines.^[63]

Massachusetts was the first state in North America to require municipalities to appoint a teacher or establish a grammar school with the passage of the Massachusetts Education Law of 1647,^[276] and 19th century reforms pushed by Horace Mann laid much of the groundwork for contemporary universal public education^[277][278] which was established in 1852.^[118] Massachusetts is home to the oldest school in continuous existence in North America (The Roxbury Latin School, founded in 1645), as well as the country's oldest public elementary school (The Mather School, founded in 1639),^[279] its oldest high school (Boston Latin School, founded in 1635),^[280] its oldest continuously operating boarding school (The Governor's Academy, founded in 1763),^[281] its oldest college (Harvard University, founded in 1636),^[282] and its oldest women's college (Mount Holyoke College, founded in 1837).^[283]
Massachusetts' per-student public expenditure for elementary and secondary schools was eighth in the nation in 2012, at $14,844.^[284] In 2013, Massachusetts scored highest of all the states in math and third highest in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.^[285]
Massachusetts is home to 121 institutions of higher education.^[286] Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both located in Cambridge, consistently rank among the world's best private universities and universities in general.^[287] In addition to Harvard and MIT, several other Massachusetts universities currently rank in the top 50 at the national level in the widely cited rankings of U.S. News and World Report: Tufts University (#27), Boston College (#31), Brandeis University (#34), Boston University (#39) and Northeastern University (#39). Massachusetts is also home to three of the top five U.S. News and World Report's best Liberal Arts Colleges: Williams College (#1), Amherst College (#2), and Wellesley College (#4).^[288] The public University of Massachusetts (nicknamed UMass) features five campuses in the state, with its flagship campus in Amherst that enrolls over 25,000 students.^[289][290]

Further information: List of colleges and universities in Massachusetts, List of engineering schools in Massachusetts, List of high schools in Massachusetts, and List of school districts in Massachusetts