Welding schools in Ohio
56 welding training programs in Ohio, sourced from IPEDS, College Scorecard, and the AWS ATF Domestic Site Listing.
California Shipbuilding Corporation, Wilmington, CA, 1942. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI, public domain
↔ Swipe to see tuition, phone, and AWS ATF
Ohio's welding-school market, by the numbers
Ohio carries 56 welding training programs, 47 of them public community and technical colleges. That public share is the state's defining trait: Ohio trains welders mostly through its two-year college system, not private trade schools. Median tuition among the 52 Ohio programs that report a figure is $9,150, against a $4,728 national median across 916 programs.
The range runs wide. Tri-County Adult Career Center in Nelsonville lists the state's lowest tuition at $700; Ohio Technical College in Cleveland runs $26,640. Both show up in the table above, along with every other program on file.
Choosing a program in Ohio
Programs cluster around the state's metros. Cincinnati alone carries 6 programs, followed by Perrysburg with 2. 13 of Ohio's programs host a co-located AWS Accredited Test Facility, so a student can test for AWS Certified Welder at the same campus where they trained, without a separate trip to an outside ATF.
If a shop, not a school, is what you're after: Akron, OH, Cincinnati, OH, Cleveland, OH each carry an own-site-verified local welding shop directory below, and more Ohio metros are linked further down this page.
Ohio's boiler and pressure-vessel license
Ohio is one of three states, alongside Massachusetts and Wisconsin, that separately licenses boiler and pressure-vessel welding; New York City and Chicago add their own city-level rules on top. Outside that specific scope, Ohio has no general state welder license: ASME code qualifications are issued by the employer under its own quality program, not by ASME to the individual welder, so there's no statewide registry to check. Coordination on the boiler side runs loosely through the National Board of Boiler and Pressure Vessel Inspectors. See how ASME qualification actually works for the employer-side detail.
What welders earn in Ohio
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates (SOC 51-4121), retrieved via api.bls.gov 2026-08-05 puts Ohio's median welder wage at $50,340 a year, below the $53,750 national median for the same period. How much welders make nationally breaks down the trade comparisons behind that figure.