Too Many Students Still Aren’t Finishing College, New Report Says

What’s New

The share of students who earn a college credential within six years of enrolling has stalled at the same rate for a third straight year, according to a report published Thursday by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. About 62 percent of students who started college in 2017 have since earned a degree or certificate.

The proportion of students who haven’t earned a credential within six years aren’t just taking longer, the data show; many have left college entirely. Of the 2.4-million students who began college in 2017, nearly one-third left without a credential — amounting to over 710,000 students. Only about 9 percent of the students who started in 2017 are still enrolled.

For students who started college in 2015, just an additional 2.5 percent graduated within seven or eight years, another indication that students are dropping out instead of taking more time. “That’s the lowest rate that we’ve seen in the past five cohorts,” said Douglas Shapiro, executive director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, during a call with reporters.

The gender gap continues to grow: The proportion of women who earned a credential within six years is over 8 percentage points higher than the share of men. The gap is “now the widest that we’ve seen since 2008,” Shapiro said.

Among types of institutions, private nonprofit four-year institutions had the highest six-year completion rate at 78 percent. Public four-year colleges recorded a rate of 67 percent; private for-profit four-year colleges, 46 percent; and public two-year colleges, 43 percent.

Enrollment rates are also dropping. Last month, another report from the research center found that 3.6-percent fewer first-year students enrolled in the fall of 2023 semester when compared to the fall of 2022.

“This is really more bad news for four-year colleges,” Shapiro said.

Completion rates climbed from 2009 until 2015, and have since leveled off. “I think a lot of institutions were really focused on improving rates of student success, and that showed up in the numbers. Rates had grown almost across the board for a number of years,” Shapiro said.

Many factors are likely contributing to the plateau, Shapiro added, including shifts in where colleges have decided to invest time and resources, and students’ changing perceptions of whether college is worth the cost. Plus, the 2017 cohort attended college during the Covid-19 pandemic, which may have contributed to student attrition.

These challenges also likely soured the trajectory of Powered by Publics, a college-completion effort led by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities that began five years ago this month. More than 125 universities banded together to try to produce “hundreds of thousands” more graduates by 2025 and to halve the achievement gaps for low-income and underrepresented-minority students. The project has now ended, and it didn’t hit those targets.

The federal government is trying to stimulate progress with the Education Department’s Postsecondary Student Success Program, which in 2023 distributed $45 million to colleges to pay for evidence-based completion programs. Its 2024 funding remains in flux.

Colleges are increasingly concerned about how the public perceives higher education. The industry’s future depends on people trusting that the time and financial investment of college is worth it.

But stagnant completion rates may reflect burgeoning levels of uncertainty about college value.

“If those levels of uncertainty increase, I think that makes it harder for students who might be struggling to find the motivation to stay in,” Shapiro said.