Study: Nearly 40 Percent of Students Started, Never Finished College
Kathryn Palmer
April 10, 2024
Federal researchers followed the post-secondary outcomes of 23,000 students for 12 years.
Only 60 percent of students who enrolled in college earned a degree or credential within eight years of graduating high school.
That’s one of the biggest takeaways from a new report the National Center for Education Statistics released Monday that analyzed the enrollment, completion and financial aid outcomes of students.
The researchers tracked the postsecondary educational outcomes of roughly 23,000 students beginning in 2009 when they were freshman in high school through 2021, when the cohort was eight years out from graduating high school.
Those 23,000 students represented the demographics of the millions of ninth graders across the country who were enrolled in public and private schools in 2009.
“A big goal of the study is to understand their educational and life outcomes,” Elise Christopher, director of the study, said. “We wanted to know how many had ended up enrolling in college and how many had completed and what kinds of degrees they’d received.”
