Education

The Upstate is home to 23 institutions of higher education serving more than 85,000 students annually through a diverse mixture of learning environments. The average SAT score of first time freshmen from the Upstate entering South Carolina Public Colleges and Universities was 1121 in 2008, above the state average of 1115. However, general educational attainment in the Upstate falls markedly short of state and national measures. South Carolina has a smaller percentage than the nation of adult residents who are high school graduates and of adult residents who are college graduates. Further, only one of the ten Upstate counties has a higher percentage than the state average of residents who have graduated from high school and of residents who have graduated from college. Of the 23 school districts in the Upstate, the latest available data reported that only eight districts exceeded the South Carolina average high school graduation rate and only four districts eclipsed the national average.