The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that, over one’s lifetime, earnings are increased by $1 million if one has a four-year college degree. The personal economic stability that is engendered by post-secondary degree attainment is reflected in figures reported by Illinois State University (2008), that for a male in 2004:

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in South Carolina, in 2006, residents with:

Although two-thirds of high-growth, high-wage jobs require a college degree, only one-third of Americans have one. Only one-fifth of Spartanburg residents have one. While 90% of the fastest-growing jobs in the economy will require higher education, less than 60% of Americans have any post-secondary training. Less than 47% of Spartanburg residents have any post-secondary training. National trends indicate that workforce issues are driving adult workers to post-secondary institutions for retraining and new opportunities.

Table 13 illustrates that jobs in the highest paid occupational areas for Spartanburg County require a skilled workforce whose members have completed post-secondary training.

The Spartanburg Area Chamber of Commerce has reported that a highly educated citizenry is essential to success in future economic development and that significantly improved rates of higher education degree attainment must be the County’s number one economic development goal in the coming years.

Correlation analysis of per capita income and bachelor’s degrees for S.C. counties reporting these data for 2006 (n= 21 counties), reveals a very strong positive correlation (0.889, p<.001). That is, there is a very strong relationship between having a bachelor’s degree and having higher income in South Carolina. This relationship is illustrated below in Figure 12, where the counties with the lowest percentage of residents holding bachelor’s degrees have the lowest per capita income. The positive linearity of the data is clear.

 The economic stability of a community is correlated with the educational attainment of its citizenry. As indicated in Table 1, Spartanburg County has the lowest median household income and per capita income of all comparison counties, lower in fact than the S.C. and U.S. averages. Likewise, Spartanburg ranks lowest in percentage of residents over 25 years of age who are high school graduates and lowest in percentage of residents over 25 years of age who are college graduates. The January 2007 U.S. Metro Economies Report issued by the U.S. Conference of Mayors indicated that, of 361 U.S. Metro Areas, Spartanburg was ranked 295 in 2000-2007 for average annual employment growth and 238 in 2000-2006 for average annual labor force growth. Further, Spartanburg’s Gross Metropolitan Product (GMP) national ranking fell from 166 in 2004 to 187 in 2007. This supports evidence of a correlation between declining productivity / employment growth and low post-secondary educational attainment in Spartanburg County.

The data indicate, however, that Spartanburg County high school seniors are aware of the importance of college education in terms of economic success. Of those surveyed, 83.1% rank going to college as "very important" and 11.2% rank going to college as "somewhat important" to success in their lives. Less than 1% rank going to college as "unimportant" or "very unimportant" (see Figure 13). If they had the opportunity to attend a two-year or four-year college or university, 94.1% would do so.