Greater Cincinnati has some 50 public school districts and nearly 300 private schools.
The public school systems on both sides of the Ohio River are on a roll, consistently ranking better and better each year on the Ohio and Kentucky “report cards” issued by the states. A 2008 study by Cincy Magazine confirmed this, crunching the numbers for its “Stellar Public School Systems” analysis (found at www.cincymagazine.com) and deciding that the superior districts in the tristate are Indian Hill, Mason, Wyoming, Mariemont, Forest Hills, Lakota, Sycamore, Madeira, Milford, Loveland, and Beechwood, Kentucky (based on per-pupil spending, state rating, teacher/student ratio, teachers with advanced degrees, percentage gifted, academic and attendance rates, graduation rates, SAT and ACT scores, AP classes, and more statistics).
Private schools are numerous and strong in the region, as well. One in four students in Hamilton County attends a private school, a higher proportion than in any metropolitan area in the state and two-and-a-half times the national average. The affluent city neighborhoods of Hyde Park and Mount Lookout top the list of communities where more residents send their children to private rather than public schools, according to a recent study. Enrollment in nondiocesan private schools is growing four times faster than in public schools in the tristate. And enrollment in diocesan Catholic schools is growing twice as fast as in public schools. With 44,000 students, the Archdiocese of Cincinnati already runs the ninth-largest Catholic school system in the nation. It’s also the biggest school system of any kind in Greater Cincinnati, with 9,000 more students than Cincinnati public schools. Another roughly 12,000 students attend schools run by the Diocese of Covington.
The choices are obviously many. What follows are highlights of some of the best, biggest, and most popular public and private schools in Greater Cincinnati.
The largest private employer in Cincinnati isn’t Procter & Gamble or Kroger or even Macy’s Department Stores. It’s the University of Cincinnati, and that fact alone says volumes about how vital higher education has become in the mind-set of Greater Cincinnati. The area offers everything from a huge state institution to a midsize Jesuit university to a dozen smaller colleges, both public and private. You can choose from a full range of campuses: urban, suburban, even rural. And the quality and breadth of majors and academic study paths are as diverse as the student populations themselves.
Xavier University, Miami University of Ohio, and the College of Mount St. Joseph, in particular, are notable academic institutions. But there’s something for everyone.
No discussion of higher education in Cincinnati can go very far without delving into what the University of Cincinnati (UC)—the second-largest educational institution in Ohio—has to offer. And that’s a lot. UC leads as a nationwide pioneer in cooperative education, giving students valuable on-the-job training and contacts while they’re still in school. And the campus has gone high tech; engineering students, for instance, participate in interactive lectures with NASA researchers thousands of miles away.
Meanwhile, the research arm of the university continues to grow. Thanks to its budding Center for Obesity and Nutrition Research (funded by $1 million annually in federal grants), UC has assembled a star team of scientists who may transform “America’s eighth fattest city” into a national center for obesity research.
UC also operates its Genome Research Institute, where some 450 researchers at the 360,000-square-foot biotech facility hunt for better treatments for heart disease, obesity, cancer, and other ills.
The area’s state schools also offer some special bargains, one being the reciprocity agreement between UC, Cincinnati State Technical and Community College, and Northern Kentucky University (NKU) that allows Ohio residents in Hamilton, Butler, Warren, Clermont, and Brown Counties to attend NKU at Kentucky-resident rates and Northern Kentucky residents to attend UC or Cincinnati State at Ohio-resident rates. To qualify, Ohio students must complete associate’s degree programs in their home state, then transfer. (Excluded from the reciprocity deal are electronics, engineering technology, industrial technology-construction, manufacturing engineering technology, nursing, and social work majors.) Students from Southeastern Indiana may also qualify for in-state resident rates at these Ohio and Kentucky institutions. Admissions offices can provide more details.
Branch campuses of UC and Miami offer lower tuition rates than the main campuses, and they provide classes that in most cases transfer to four-year degrees at the main campuses. Cost per quarterly credit hour at UC’s Clermont College is less than 80 percent of the cost at the main campus, and the cost at UC’s Raymond Walters campus in Blue Ash is less than 90 percent. At Miami’s Middletown and Hamilton branch campuses, annual undergraduate tuition is about a third lower than at the main campus in Oxford. All Miami branch campus credits transfer to the main campus, but you need to check the course listings for UC’s branch campuses to see which credits will transfer there.
A further advantage if you choose to study here: Cincinnati’s institutes of higher learning do cooperate with each other. The Greater Cincinnati Consortium of Colleges and Universities allows students at the 13 member private and public schools to take courses at any of the other schools if they’re not offered at their home institutions. Consortium members include the Art Academy of Cincinnati, Athenaeum of Ohio, Cincinnati State, College of Mount St. Joseph, Hebrew Union College/Jewish Institute of Religion, Miami University, Northern Kentucky University, Thomas More College, University of Cincinnati, Wilmington College, and Xavier University.
Greater Cincinnati colleges are also long on convenience. Many of them offer evening and weekend programs. The Cincinnati branches of Wilmington College have centered their entire programs around working adults, and entire new universities such as Indiana-Wesleyan and University of Phoenix have entered the market to cater to working students.
Chances are you can study at a Cincinnati university without spending much on gas either. Even the campuses of UC have branches at some area high schools and off-site office centers, including a shopping center storefront campus in Summerside and the West Chester City Hall.
Everyone, in fact, seems to be branching out. The newest and fastest-growing satellite campuses can be found on the far East Side, and that’s not surprising, since the East Side—along with the northern suburbs—boasts some of the fastest-growing residential communities in the tristate. Wilmington College recently added an East Side branch in the Eastgate Mall area near Anderson and a campus in Blue Ash, for instance. And Clermont College in Batavia, a satellite of UC, recently launched a massive expansion program. Enrollment at Clermont, already up 40 percent since the beginning of the last decade, sparked construction of a $10 million complex housing 43,000 square feet of additional classroom space.
The listings in this chapter cover the major traditional colleges in the area along with some alternatives to traditional colleges—among them, Cincinnati State, Communiversity, and the Union Institute, perhaps the nation’s most innovative alternative-education institution. You’ll also find a section on continuing adult education as well as trade and technical schools.
In short, whatever your educational need, whatever your time frame and financial constraints, you’ll find the solution at one of Greater Cincinnati’s numerous houses of higher education. Read on.
Cincinnati-area libraries are a model of regional cooperation, thanks to the Greater Cincinnati Library Consortium, (513) 751-4422, a group of 44 college and university, public, school, and special libraries with more than 10 million books and 50,000 periodicals. A library card from any member library allows you to borrow materials directly from any of the others. Then you can return what you borrowed to the closest member library, and it will get routed back to the right place.
At least part of the local library system’s success is due to the fact that Hamilton County early on consolidated all its libraries into one system, avoiding duplication of staff and expenses. (By comparison, Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County has nine public library systems.)
Library systems in the surrounding suburban counties have branch systems of their own. Anyone with library cards from these systems also can obtain a free Hamilton County library card, and an estimated 10 percent of the Hamilton County system’s circulation is attributable to noncounty residents.
At the center of the region’s public library system is the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, the oldest public library west of the Alleghenies. It was founded in 1853, 16 years before the Cincinnati Reds, which gives you an idea of its lofty place in Cincinnati history. Nationwide, it ranks second in per capita circulation among major public library systems in the nation and fourth in total collection overall. While the library’s per capita circulation ranks it ahead of the New York and Chicago public libraries (and many others), local librarians are nonetheless upset with their No. 2 slot—for 17 years, you see, the Cincinnati/Hamilton County library consistently placed No. 1, until Denver claimed the top spot in a recent ranking.
More impressive news came in when a national survey showed the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County ranked first in the nation for circulation per card holder, and also ranked first in holdings per capita (10.9 items per person, more than double those of the library in second place, Queens, New York). In one year alone the library circulated 14,861,011 items total.
The heart of the 40-library system—with its 403,531 registered users—is the main branch downtown, which holds more than 10 million books, periodicals, maps, books on tape, CDs, and CD-ROMs. You can also research your family tree in one of the nation’s largest—and from all appearances most heavily used—genealogy centers.
A blocklong annex to the downtown branch, opened at a cost of $44 million, offers a plethora of services. The Magazines and Newspapers section includes 18,000 newspapers and periodicals, and the Public Documents and Patents section is one of only three at U.S. libraries to offer the complete U.S. Census records. The dazzling Children’s Learning Center includes dozens of computers and free Internet access (see the Kidstuff chapter for more details). The Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped offers a full range of services for the disabled, including CINCH workstations with voice and Braille capability. This annex is connected to the main library by a skywalk.
Plastic library cards allow librarians to tally your withdrawals—and instantly discover your overdue misdemeanors—with a swipe of the card. The plastic cards also allow you Internet access at all branches (you need to ask for a PIN code, however). Don’t like to read? You can use your card to borrow up to six DVDs or videos, four CD-ROMs, and 20 CDs at one time.
Other useful services that accompany your card include INFOFAX, wherein a page from any printed resource at the downtown branch can be faxed directly to your home or business. And if you find yourself in a hospital or—even more unhappily—in a prison, the public library will still serve you through its Books by Mail program. The program serves patients in nursing homes and retirement centers, as well as others who find their movement restricted.
What’s the most popular item at the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County? DVDs, no question. In one recent year library users borrowed more than 1.5 million DVDs—up 86 percent from the previous year. The largest branch library, in terms of circulation? The Anderson branch on the East Side.
With a card from most public libraries, you can check out or even order books and materials in collections of local college libraries.