City profile, Charleston, South Carolina
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.