Does education spread across cities to increase tech level, and how far?

If I build an education specialist city and remove all other education buildings, am I right in thinking that all of my students in the nearby cities will commute there for study, grow up to become educated workers, and over time increase the tech level in the surrounding cities?

Or do you need a college/university within an industrial city in order to increase its tech level?

Also, what's the maximum distance that Sims will commute for study? Is it just within each 4 city area of a region surrounding a great work, or even less?

Solution 1:

Tech points are generated at a community college or university as sims enter the doors of the education building. If you turn on the tech dataview, you'll see tech points reaching out from the school to your industry as purple lines, as well as each industry building's accumulated tech points. The purple lines deliver tech points to industry buildings. When enough points are accumulated in a building, that building moves up a tech level.

The purple tech delivery lines do not cross city borders. The tech level in each city is constrained by the local education system.

If you only have a community college, your city will be limitted to tech level 2. If you have a university, your city can get tech level 3. It is unclear whether a mixture of tech points from these two buildings are additive (do they stack?). The common recommendation is to not build a community college (it detracts students from the university, slowing its growth and research).

Also, what's the maximum distance that Sims will commute for study?

Students will commute from cities that are connected by road. How to determine how much commuting you'll see is currently unknown. Also - just because students are commuting into your city, doesn't mean they are (actually) commuting out of their source city.

Commuting students generate local tech points.

Solution 2:

What you are saying sounds good in theory, but I have found in practice that it doesn't work that way. I have never been able to achieve much in the way of regional students attending my universities despite a plethora of mass transit options.

Also, even for the students that do commute for their education, they will not bring back the tech level boosts with them. They will simply become educated and contribute toward your city education level. In order to achieve manufacturing level industry, you will need your own community college at a minimum. Additionally, to achieve high tech industry you will need your own university. Once you have a university, you can destroy your community college.

You can get the answer to most of your education related questions here:

Once you build a University, can the high school and community college be safely closed?

Kalina posted an excellent analysis of the whole system.

The other thing to consider, is that Sims don't grow up in this version of the game. Residential structures generate 3 types of "agents"... workers, shoppers, and kids. Kids become students when given an accessible source of education. When school lets out for the day, they bring back their knowledge to the building that generated them, which then increases the education level of the building. If the students continue to receive proper education, any workers generated by that structure will be educated as well.