Schooling
How far Charleston residents got in school, and where the degrees cluster.
On this page
At a glance
High school or higher
95.9%
Residents age 25 and over.
2019–23
Bachelor's or higher
57.7%
2019–23
Graduate or professional degree
22.2%
2019–23
No high school diploma
4.1%
2019–23
Composition
The whole ladder
The figures behind the chart
| Share of residents 25+ | Value |
|---|---|
| No high school diploma | 4.1% |
| High school or GED | 15.4% |
| Some college, no degree | 16% |
| Associate's degree | 6.8% |
| Bachelor's degree | 35.5% |
| Graduate or professional | 22.2% |
2019–23 · B15003
Geography
Where the degrees are
All 99 tracts, as a table
| Tract | Value |
|---|---|
| Census Tract 48 | 87.2% |
| Census Tract 21.04 | 86.5% |
| Census Tract 5 | 85.3% |
| Census Tract 7 | 83.1% |
| Census Tract 2 | 82.5% |
| Census Tract 21.05 | 82% |
| Census Tract 10 | 78.1% |
| Census Tract 30 | 75.1% |
| Census Tract 6 | 75% |
| Census Tract 47.01 | 74.9% |
| Census Tract 46.21 | 73.4% |
| Census Tract 46.15 | 72.5% |
| Census Tract 46.16 | 71.7% |
| Census Tract 49.02 | 71.5% |
| Census Tract 46.14 | 71.3% |
| Census Tract 46.22 | 70.4% |
| Census Tract 46.17 | 70.1% |
| Census Tract 20.07 | 69% |
| Census Tract 1 | 68.9%± |
| Census Tract 51 | 68.6% |
| Census Tract 49.01 | 67.2% |
| Census Tract 19.01 | 66.4% |
| Census Tract 46.19 | 66% |
| Census Tract 26.06 | 65.1% |
| Census Tract 4 | 64.4% |
| Census Tract 28.02 | 64.2% |
| Census Tract 46.12 | 63.7% |
| Census Tract 57.02 | 62.6% |
| Census Tract 56.01 | 62.5% |
| Census Tract 46.20 | 62.2% |
| Census Tract 46.10 | 62% |
| Census Tract 11 | 61.2% |
| Census Tract 59 | 60.8% |
| Census Tract 20.04 | 59.1% |
| Census Tract 29 | 58.7% |
| Census Tract 46.13 | 58.3%± |
| Census Tract 20.05 | 58.2% |
| Census Tract 15 | 57.4% |
| Census Tract 35 | 57.3% |
| Census Tract 46.07 | 57.1% |
| Census Tract 47.02 | 56.2% |
| Census Tract 20.06 | 55.1% |
| Census Tract 21.03 | 54.6% |
| Census Tract 20.02 | 53.7% |
| Census Tract 58 | 53.2% |
| Census Tract 26.04 | 51.8% |
| Census Tract 57.01 | 51.4% |
| Census Tract 19.02 | 50.7% |
| Census Tract 21.06 | 50.6% |
| Census Tract 56.02 | 50.2% |
| Census Tract 21.07 | 49.8% |
| Census Tract 46.09 | 49.4% |
| Census Tract 28.01 | 49.4% |
| Census Tract 27.01 | 48.6% |
| Census Tract 9 | 48.1% |
| Census Tract 36 | 47.8% |
| Census Tract 26.12 | 47.1% |
| Census Tract 26.05 | 46.3% |
| Census Tract 46.18 | 45.9% |
| Census Tract 20.09 | 45.8% |
| Census Tract 32 | 44.6% |
| Census Tract 20.08 | 43.8% |
| Census Tract 26.11 | 42.7% |
| Census Tract 23 | 42.3% |
| Census Tract 22 | 40.8% |
| Census Tract 53 | 40.6% |
| Census Tract 26.14 | 39.7% |
| Census Tract 54 | 39.2%± |
| Census Tract 31.17 | 38.2% |
| Census Tract 50.01 | 37% |
| Census Tract 25.04 | 36.5% |
| Census Tract 26.13 | 34% |
| Census Tract 50.02 | 33.6% |
| Census Tract 27.02 | 33% |
| Census Tract 44 | 31.1% |
| Census Tract 31.16 | 29.5%± |
| Census Tract 25.03 | 28.5% |
| Census Tract 31.11 | 28% |
| Census Tract 21.08 | 27.8%± |
| Census Tract 31.07 | 26.5%± |
| Census Tract 31.13 | 25.5%± |
| Census Tract 37 | 24.8%± |
| Census Tract 31.06 | 24.2% |
| Census Tract 31.08 | 24.1% |
| Census Tract 31.15 | 23.7%± |
| Census Tract 24.01 | 22.3% |
| Census Tract 55 | 21.8%± |
| Census Tract 31.09 | 21.4% |
| Census Tract 24.02 | 21%± |
| Census Tract 39 | 20.2% |
| Census Tract 33 | 19.4%± |
| Census Tract 34 | 19.3%± |
| Census Tract 40 | 17.4%± |
| Census Tract 31.05 | 16.7%± |
| Census Tract 31.04 | 14.3%± |
| Census Tract 31.10 | 12.7%± |
| Census Tract 38 | 7.6%± |
| Census Tract 43 | 6.1%± |
| Census Tract 9901 | Not available |
2019–23 · B15003
Reading it
What’s notable
57.7% of adults hold at least a bachelor's degree and 95.9% finished high school, while 4.1% never did. Both tails are unusually long here: a degree share closer to a college town than to its own state, sitting alongside a share of adults without a diploma that has not moved much in a decade.
Attainment measures where people ended up, not where they were taught. In a city with heavy in-migration, a high degree share is substantially an import statistic: it reflects who moved here for work, and says comparatively little about the schools.
That is also why this page is incomplete. School-level performance comes from the South Carolina Department of Education report cards, which publish no machine-readable export and have to be transcribed by hand. Until that happens, nothing here should be read as a statement about local schools.
Sources
These are estimates. Most figures here come from surveys of a sample, not a count of everyone, and different rows carry different vintages - each number shows its own rather than being averaged into a single date. Where a margin of error is published it is shown; anything wider than about 30% of its own estimate is flagged, and on maps it is hatched. Read those as “we don’t really know” rather than as a number.
Partial coverage. Some measures for this topic are not published yet on this page. Nothing has been estimated or filled in to cover the gap.
Data retrieved: July 29, 2026
Questions
What percentage of Charleston has a college degree?+
57.7% of residents 25 and over hold a bachelor's degree or higher - about 61,921 people. That is well above the national figure and well above South Carolina's.
Why does this only count people 25 and over?+
Because younger adults are often still in school, and counting them would record an in-progress degree as an absent one. Twenty-five is the Census Bureau’s standard cutoff for attainment and the reason these figures are comparable between places.
Does a high degree share mean the schools are good?+
Not on its own. Attainment counts adults living here now, most of whom were educated elsewhere - in a city growing through in-migration it says more about who moved in than about local schools. School performance data is not yet on this page.
Why is this topic marked incomplete?+
Because attainment is only half of it. South Carolina Department of Education report cards cover school-level enrollment, funding, and outcomes, but publish no machine-readable export, so adding them is a manual transcription job that has not been done yet. Rather than imply full coverage, the page says so.