Tue, Nov 24 2009
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Published June 25, 2008 06:34 pm - When it comes to higher education, Ashtabula County is at the bottom of the class. County fails to make higher-education grade higher education, Ashtabula County is at the bottom of the class., Census Bureau, high school diploma By CARL E. FEATHER - Lifestyle Editor - cfeather@starbeacon.com Star Beacon When it comes to higher education, Ashtabula County is at the bottom of the class.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, only 12.3 percent of the county’s residents 25 or older have a bachelor’s degree or higher. Nationwide, the rate is 27.3 percent. Just across the county line, in Lake County, the rate 22.7 percent. The county’s percentage of residents with a bachelor’s degree is even lower than the state average for West Virginia, which comes in dead last nationally. “It seems pretty pervasive in our community that young people just don’t aspire to higher education,” says Susan Stocker, dean of Kent State University-Ashtabula campus. The relationship between higher education and higher pay is well proven. According to Census Bureau data, workers 18 and older with bachelor degrees earn an average of $51,206 annually; those with only a high school diploma earn $27,915. Those with advanced degrees pull down $74,602. A worker without a high school diploma averages only $18,734. In Ashtabula County, roughly 20 percent of the population lacks a high school diploma, about the same as the national percentage. It would be easy to shift all of the blame for the county’s poor per capita and household-income standings on the educational level alone. However, if jobs that require college degrees don’t exist in the county and an individual is unwilling to assume the expense involved in commuting to jobs that do require a degree, there’s not much incentive for college-educated individuals to locate here. “It’s the chicken or the egg,” says Mary Zappitelli, Conneaut Area City Schools’ superintendent. Edgewood Senior High School guidance counselor Gary Himes points out that a college graduate wants to get on with life after making an investment of four years and tens of thousands of dollars. “People cannot go out and get an education and them come back home and wait for a job to open up,” he says. Indeed, the county’s low rate of college-degreed residents hints at a brain drain: an exodus of the county’s brightest students who either don’t want to or can’t return here to earn a living once they’ve received a degree. “There is no place for them to work,” says Ashtabula Area City Schools’ Superintendent Joseph Donatone. “There are not enough jobs that require a bachelor’s or advanced degree.” Himes says exit surveys done with the senior class each year suggest 45 to 55 percent of the students plan to get a four-year degree and another 15 percent a two-year degree or technical school certificate. Although the school does not track where the students end up, anecdotally, Himes feels most don’t return to Ashtabula County, at least not right away. “I would imagine the vast majority of our students, when they go away to college to earn a four-year degree, probably do not return here. The only ones that might are those who go into medical or education jobs.” 
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