Portland, OR (population: 573,530) has five floral design schools within a 500-mile radius of its city center. Santa Rosa Junior College, the highest ranked school in this group with a floral design program, has a total student population of 25,877. It is the 4107th highest ranked school in the USA and the 378th highest in the state of California (#1 is University of California-Los Angeles). To learn more about floral design programs in Portland, ratemyprofessors.com has reviews of floral design professors at Santa Rosa Junior College such as Barbara Bennetts, Leira Bobo, Bonnie Panizzera, Ginny Winters, and Art Woolsey.
Floral Design students from Portland schools who go on to become floral designers, architecture designers, designers, fashion designers, etc. have a good chance at finding employment. For example, there are 51,470 people working as floral designers alone in the US, and their average annual salary is $24,940. Also, Fashion designers make on average $74,410 per year and there are about 15,780 of them employed in the US today. In fact, in the Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton-WA area alone, there are ** employed fashion designers earning an average salary of $56,540. Floral designers in this area earn $24,320/yr and there are 330 employed.
Portland lies in Clackamas county, which is one of the 16 counties in Oregon. Overall, the Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton-WA area has 993,470 total employed workers according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, with a 0.6% unemployment rate, $22.15/hr average worker wage, and a $46,080 average annual salary. Thus, about 0.337 out of every 1000 jobs in Portland are held by floral designers, and **/1000 are held by fashion designers.
Of the 5 floral design schools with a 500-mile radius of Portland, only 3 have a student population over 10k. After taking into account tuition, living expenses, and financial aid, Clover Park Technical College comes out as the most expensive ($9,663/yr) for floral design students, with Shasta College as the lowest, reported at only $5,404/yr.
| Name | State | Population | # of Schools | Avg School Rank | Total Programs | Distance from Portland |
| Vancouver | WA | 169,603 | 5 | 29.2795 | 91 | 6.3 miles |
| Beaverton | OR | 94,639 | 1 | 27.5128 | 6 | 8.8 miles |
| Aloha | OR | 48,328 | 1 | 25.9507 | 7 | 10.8 miles |
| Gresham | OR | 104,562 | 1 | 12.9715 | 88 | 11.0 miles |
| Oregon City | OR | - | 1 | 13.6089 | 75 | 12.9 miles |
| McMinnville | OR | - | 3 | 33.009 | 71 | 34.7 miles |
| Salem | OR | 157,890 | 12 | 32.4146 | 406 | 46.3 miles |
| The Dalles | OR | - | 1 | 11.3829 | 21 | 71.8 miles |
| Astoria | OR | - | 2 | 18.4622 | 36 | 72.0 miles |
| Corvallis | OR | 51,582 | 1 | 28.8426 | 8 | 73.6 miles |