A greater share of Columbus City Schools graduates get bachelor's degrees than most large urban districts in Ohio, but new data show the district's rate is less than half the state average.
An Ohio Department of Education and Workforce database released in Septembertracking educational and workforce outcomes of high school graduates across the state found that 12% of 2018 CCS graduates obtained a bachelor's degree after six years, while more than 24% discontinued higher education.
According to state data, CCS had a four-year high school graduation rate of 82.1% in 2018.
The ODEW report also shows that among 2018 CCS graduates, just 7.3% work in Ohio and have a college degree. Just over 49% work in Ohio without a college degree. The report also found
the median earnings of a 2018 CCS graduate was just over $28,700.
CCS did not respond to a request for comment.
CCS is lagging well behind the state average of 28.3% of Ohio high school graduates who attained a bachelor's degree after six years and 19.5% who discontinued higher education.
Still, Columbus' degree attainment rate is larger than most large, urban districts in the state. Only Akron City Schools and Cincinnati Public Schools, which are 17.1% and 20.9% respectively, have higher proportions of students who earn college degrees.
The state's largest five-star district, Olentangy Local Schools, had a six-year degree attainment rate of 63.2% and 15.5% discontinued their education.
The Ohio Department of Education and Workforce sponsored the dataset, which was compiled by the Ohio Education Resource Center (OERC) at Ohio State University's John Glenn College of Public Affairs.
The data was compiled using state education and workforce data, as well as a national college education database.
Erin Joyce, associate director of the OERC, said the intention of the project was to prompt questions from other researchers, policymakers and school officials. College enrollment is only part of the story, she said.
"Not just 'Are we getting into a higher education program?' but also 'Are we moving forward?'" Joyce said. "We think what this tool will do us hopefully prompt a lot of questions."
Joyce said Ohio doesn't have "particularly high" bachelor's degree attainment, and said there is a wide variation between rural, urban and suburban schools.
"What often happens in some of our larger urban districts and some of our rural districts is that you do have that lower degree attainment," Joyce said. "It is something that aligns with broader trends in the state."
In a statement, CCS spokesperson Mike Brown said that "economics often drive postsecondary decisions, particularly for students from lower-income households."
"A job loss, medical expense, car repair, or rent increase can be enough to force a student to leave college or job training to work and support their family," Brown said.
Vlad Kogan, an Ohio State political science professor who was not affiliated with the research, cautioned against "blaming districts" for things that are outside of their control when it comes to the outcomes of marginalized student populations, but said he had hoped the "upper bounds" of outcomes would have been higher.
"You have the best school with the same disparaged students, what's the upper bound of how much you can do?" Kogan said. "The upper bounds are probably lower than we might hope it would be."
Some CCS high schools appear to have generated no discernable four-year college graduates
Among Columbus Schools' 18 traditional high schools, six of them did not produce an identifiable college graduate after six years: East High School, Independence High School, Linden-McKinley STEM Academy, Marion-Franklin High School, South High School and West High School. Most of the high schools in question had a percentage of students who began college but did not complete it after six years.
However, each school has graduates listed in the "suppressed" category, meaning they were not placed in a category to protect privacy. This can happen, the OERC researchers said, if the sample size is below 10 individuals.
Columbus Alternative High School, the district's highest-rated high school program, had a 43.8% degree attainment rate. More than 27% of students began college education but did not finish.
Kogan said that while students not attaining degrees is concerning, what is more alarming are the students who began college but did not finish it.
"One thing worse than not getting college education is going out, taking on a lot of debts and not finishing," Kogan said. "Then you're kind of in a worse-case-scenario where you don't have the benefit f the degree but you have al the costs of attending for a few years."
Brown said part of the work included in the Columbus Promise program at Columbus State Community College includes financial assistance for unexpected life events and personal coaching.
"We should examine why students who enroll in college do not complete and provide the support they need to persist," Brown said.
Kogan also questioned whether "getting more degrees into kids' hands" might create a trade-off scenario.
"There's a lot of students leaving Columbus, going to college who are unprepared," Kogan said. "It may be that the bar is a bit too low and that's showing up in some of these longer-term outcome data."
How COVID-19 may have impacted the data
Joyce said the fact that the most complete cohort in the data set, the class of 2018, was just two years post-graduate when the COVID-19 pandemic began, wasn't even a caveat to the data – it's just a fact that "echoes of COVID" will be represented in educational and workforce data.
A 2025 Duke University study found that nationally, college enrollment declined 12% from its 2010 peak by 2022, and the pandemic accelerated the decline.
Tian Lou, research scientist for the OERC, said the data in Ohio showed the college enrollment rate declined post-COVID, with a potential bigger impact on urban and rural areas compared to suburban areas.
"I think the dashboard provides that level of granular information for us to see which group of students are more impacted by an unexpected event like COVID," Lou said.
Cole Behrens covers K-12 education and school districts in central Ohio. Have a tip? Contact Cole at cbehrens@dispatch.com or connect with him on X at @Colebehr_report
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus City Schools grads lag Ohio peers in earning college degrees
