Dropping Out, Again: Why So Many College Students Never Graduate

A decade ago, then-18-year-old Sophia Stoll resolved that she wanted to go away for college. The working-class New Yorker enrolled in a private Catholic university outside of Pittsburgh, but by her junior year, she’d realized that the media and technology program didn’t suit her goals. Stoll dropped out, worked odd jobs for a year back home, then transferred to SUNY-Fredonia. But she ended up suffering from extreme anxiety, she says, and withdrew after a semester.

Dropping Out, Again: Why So Many College Students Never Graduate 141111-sophia-stolls-stills-02_2d4cc02926b797f1afac13937852570a.nbcnews-ux-960-700

Dropping Out, Again: Why So Many College Students Never Graduate 141111-sophia-stolls-stills-02_2d4cc02926b797f1afac13937852570a.nbcnews-ux-960-700

Several years later, she tried enrolling once again—this time at Brooklyn College—and enjoyed it. Yet after switching schools for the second time, she was discouraged to find that many of her credits hadn’t transferred. She withdrew the same year.

“The thought of going back again after all this time makes me tense up,” she said. “I also don’t want to take out any more loans” than the $11,000 she already has. It’s been two years since Stoll, now 28, left Brooklyn College. And because she has a stable communications job at a local union, she’s not sure she’s ever going back.

A new study has found that Stoll’s academic history is overwhelmingly common for “repeat noncompleters”—students who have a stop-and-start college experience. The study, based on National Student Clearinghouse Research Center data of 4.5 million non-first-time students, found that only about a third of students who re-enrolled in college between 2005 and 2008 ended up earning their degree. The completion rates for those students at public four-year universities and community colleges was 27 percent lower than for first-time students.

The study was conducted by InsideTrack, American Council on Education, NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, and the University Professional and Continuing Education Association. These numbers confirmed what education experts already knew: Colleges and universities need to do a better job retaining their students—especially nontraditional ones with families, jobs, and other commitments, which now account for 75 to 80 percent of all incoming college students, according to the study’s researchers.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/education/dropping-out-again-why-so-many-college-students-never-graduate-n246956

Dropping Out, Again: Why So Many College Students Never Graduate

Dropping Out, Again: Why So Many College Students Never Graduate

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