Ohio School Counselor
Ohio school counselors work with students from pre-K through 12th grade. The state projects about 1,020 job openings a year from 2024 to 2034, and the May 2025 median wage is $61,760. You’ll need a master’s in school counseling and a five-year professional pupil services license from the Ohio State Board of Education. Sixteen CACREP-accredited Ohio programs offer the degree.
Ohio Links
About 13,250 people work as school and career counselors and advisors in Ohio (May 2025), in large urban districts like Columbus and Cleveland and in hundreds of smaller districts across the state. The Ohio Department of Education and Workforce names student wellness as one of its four strategic priorities, alongside literacy, accelerating learning and workforce readiness, and counselors do much of the day-to-day wellness work in schools. To get started, visit the pages below.
What School Counselors Do in Ohio
At the elementary level, a school counselor in Ohio might be the first adult a child talks to when something is wrong at home. They run small groups on social skills, check in with students, flag issues to teachers, and help kids build the emotional vocabulary to work through conflict before it escalates. Caseloads at this level can be large, and the work focuses less on academics and more on laying groundwork. Students who feel safe and understood tend to learn better.
In middle school, the focus shifts. A counselor in a Columbus-area district might spend her mornings leading classroom lessons on goal-setting and career awareness, then her afternoons working through a string of individual appointments: a student struggling with anxiety, another who missed three weeks after a family crisis, a parent calling about a course placement dispute. The day rarely follows a plan.
By high school, academics and careers take center stage, and Ohio’s career planning tools are one of its real strengths. Counselors have access to OhioMeansJobs K-12, a no-cost career exploration platform that helps students map out post-secondary options before they graduate. Counselors use it to guide conversations about technical programs, four-year degrees, military paths, and entering the workforce right after high school. Not every student is college-bound, and good counselors don’t pretend otherwise.
Across all grade levels, Ohio school counselors work within the ASCA National Model, which organizes their work into three domains: academic, career, and social-emotional development. The framework gives counselors a common language and a structure for building programs that serve all students, not just the ones who show up at the door in crisis. The Ohio Department of Education and Workforce also publishes the Ohio Standards for School Counselors alongside its counselor evaluation resources, so the state’s expectations sit on top of the national model.
Job Outlook in Ohio
Ohio projects about 1,020 openings a year in this occupation from 2024 to 2034, according to the state long-term projections published through Projections Central. Most of those openings come from counselors retiring or leaving the field rather than from new positions. Overall employment is expected to stay roughly flat, rising 1.9% over the decade, compared with 3.5% nationally for the same occupation in the same projection round.
If you’re looking for school counselor jobs in Ohio, that’s the honest picture: steady turnover in a workforce that isn’t expanding much. The jobs cluster in the three largest metros. Columbus, Cincinnati and Cleveland each employ roughly 2,400 to 2,500 people in this occupation (May 2025). Dayton, Toledo and Akron follow with about 870 to 980 each. Rural districts post fewer openings overall.
School Counselor Salary in Ohio
Ohio’s median wage in this occupation was $61,760 in May 2025, below the national median of $64,330. These BLS figures cover educational, guidance, and career counselors and advisors, a federal category that includes some counselors who work outside K-12 schools. Where you work in Ohio matters less than you might expect: all six of the state’s largest metros sit within $3,000 of the state median. The bigger spread is between individual counselors. The top quarter earned $80,120 or more, and the top 10% earned $99,810 or more.
| Percentile | Annual Salary |
|---|---|
| 10th | $43,010 |
| 25th | $48,660 |
| Median (50th) | $61,760 |
| 75th | $80,120 |
| 90th | $99,810 |
| Metro Area | Median Salary |
|---|---|
| Columbus, OH | $62,080 |
| Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN | $61,830 |
| Cleveland, OH | $61,620 |
| Akron, OH | $61,330 |
| Dayton-Kettering-Beavercreek, OH | $60,650 |
| Toledo, OH | $58,770 |
CACREP-Accredited School Counseling Programs in Ohio
Ohio has 16 CACREP-accredited school counseling programs. The table orders them by how many master’s graduates each university reported for 2023, which measures size, not quality. Before enrolling, confirm that the program meets Ohio’s current school counselor licensure requirements. CACREP accreditation alone shouldn’t be treated as proof of eligibility for every state’s school counselor license.
| Institution | City | Degree | Accredited Through | Master’s Graduates (2023) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Youngstown State University | Youngstown | M.S.Ed. | October 31, 2031 | 54 |
| Cleveland State University | Cleveland | M.Ed. | March 31, 2028 | 48 |
| John Carroll University | University Heights | M.Ed. | October 31, 2029 | 22 |
| University of Dayton | Dayton | M.Ed. | March 31, 2027 | 20 |
| Kent State University | Kent | M.Ed./M.S. | March 31, 2030 | 17 |
| Bowling Green State University | Bowling Green | M.Ed. | March 31, 2027 | 16 |
| Wright State University | Dayton | M.A./M.Ed. | October 31, 2027 | 16 |
| University of Cincinnati | Cincinnati | M.Ed. | April 30, 2034 | 13 |
| University of Akron | Akron | M.A. | March 31, 2033 | 11 |
| Malone University | Canton | M.A.Ed. | October 31, 2028 | 9 |
| Capital University | Columbus | M.Ed. | October 31, 2031 | 7 |
| Xavier University | Cincinnati | M.A. | March 31, 2031 | 7 |
| Ohio University | Athens | M.Ed. | October 31, 2032 | 3 |
Three more programs are CACREP-accredited but don’t report graduates under the federal code used here, so they’re listed separately rather than placed in the size order: Ohio State University in Columbus (accredited through October 31, 2033), the University of Toledo in Toledo (through October 31, 2029) and Walsh University in North Canton (through October 31, 2031).
CACREP lists three of these programs as Accredited (Reaffirmation in Process): Bowling Green State University, Cleveland State University and the University of Dayton. Five are Accredited (Progress Report Required): John Carroll University, Ohio State University, Ohio University, the University of Akron and the University of Toledo. The current cycles at Bowling Green State and Dayton end March 31, 2027, so confirm their status on CACREP’s site before you apply.
Ohio puts state money behind student mental health
Since fiscal year 2024, Ohio law has required districts and schools to spend at least half of their Student Wellness and Success Funds on mental health services, physical health care services, or both. In fiscal year 2025, districts and schools spent $224.9 million of those funds on mental health services, the largest category, according to the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce. Districts reported using the money to hire counselors and contract with psychologists and social workers, so when you interview, it’s worth asking how a district uses these funds.
How this table was built. Every program here is accredited by CACREP as a School Counseling program, verified against the CACREP register on September 30, 2026. Any program whose CACREP status shows a teach-out, closure, show-cause or withdrawal is excluded, because a reader cannot reliably enroll in it. Programs are ordered by the number of master’s graduates each university reported to the federal IPEDS survey for 2023 under CIP code 13.1101, which measures size, not quality. That count covers the whole university, so a school running more than one school counseling master’s reports them together, and a low count can mean some graduates are reported under a different code. Treat the order as a rough guide to size rather than a ranking. Programs with the same count are listed alphabetically. Where a university reports no graduates under that code, we name it below the table rather than place it in the order. CACREP accreditation is not the same as state approval: check the Ohio requirements for school counselor certification before you enroll.
- Openings, not growth. Ohio projects about 1,020 openings a year from 2024 to 2034, mostly from turnover, while overall employment stays roughly flat.
- Pay sits slightly below the national median. Ohio’s May 2025 median is $61,760, compared with $64,330 nationally, and the top 10% earned $99,810 or more.
- The work changes by grade level. Elementary counselors build social and emotional groundwork, and high school counselors spend more time on course, college, and career planning.
- Sixteen accredited programs in state. Ohio has 16 CACREP-accredited school counseling programs, from Youngstown State to Ohio University.
- You’ll need a master’s and an Ohio license. School counselors hold a five-year professional pupil services license from the Ohio State Board of Education, which requires a master’s, an approved preparation program, and the state’s school counselor licensure exam. You don’t need a separate clinical counselor license to work as a school counselor.
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