The South Carolina Department of Education recently released its College Freshman Report for the 2009-10 school year, showing only  a slight increase in the percent of the Charlotte metropolitan region’s high school graduates intending to pursue higher education.  With almost 25,000 Charlotte area high school graduates in 2009-10, intentions remained relatively similar to previous years, with 84.9 percent pursuing higher education, 7.9 percent pursuing gainful employment and 3.8 percent pursuing the military.  However, these numbers follow the slow but steady trends of increasing higher education and decreasing employment intentions.

While the region numbers have continued steady trends, changes in individual South Carolina school districts have been starker.  Within the last school year, Clover School District (York County) has seen an increase from 61.0 percent of high school graduates pursuing higher education to 79.6 percent; this was accompanied by an 11.8 percentage point drop in those intending to enter the job market.   York School District 1 also saw big changes, but in the opposite direction – its portion of high school graduates pursuing college dropped 12.8 percentage points to 54.6 percent in 2009-10. 

About the data:  These data are derived from the North Carolina Department of Instruction Statistical Profile and South Carolina Department of Education College Freshman Reports.   While reported together on the Charlotte Regional Indicators website, the higher education intention category can be broken down into 2-year versus 4-year, public versus private, and in-state versus out-of-state colleges.