Millions of adults drop out of college and then re-enroll. And millions are finishing their degrees. … [+]
Nearly one million Americans who had dropped out of college returned to school in the past five years and earned an undergraduate degree or certificate. That’s according to a new report, Some College, No Degree: A 2019 Snapshot for the Nation and 50 States, released Wednesday by the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) Research Center.
NSC defined an overall cohort of Some College, No Degree (SCND) students as those who had enrolled at a U.S. college after January 1, 1993, had not earned a degree as of December 31, 2018 and were not currently enrolled in college. This method yielded a total of 35.9 million adults, and increase of 6.6 million since the last look in 2013. To appreciate the magnitude of this group, remember this: it’s twice the size of all undergraduates currently enrolled in postsecondary institutions.
NSC also identified two other groups of students: those who had returned to school and earned an undergraduate credential (a certificate, AA degree or Bachelor’s degree) and those who had re-enrolled in school but had, as of the end of 2018, not yet earned a credential.
Who are SCND students?
The median age of the 36 million SCNDers is 39; 51% are women. The typical dropout left higher education ten years ago, and 53% quit before completing two years of study. Half of them live in just nine states – California, Texas, New York, Illinois, Florida, Ohio, Washington, Michigan and Pennsylvania. NSC’s report presents additional SCND data for every state.
Ten percent (3.5 million) of the SCND cohort were further defined as potential completers, meaning they had finished the equivalent of at least two years of full-time study in the past ten years. They tend to be younger than the overall cohort, to drop out and come back to college more often, and to enroll in a greater number of different schools. The data suggest they also hold the best promise for ultimately earning a credential.
Who are the students who returned to college and earned a credential?
A total of 3.8 million SCND students re-enrolled in college in the past five years, and 940,000 (25%) earned a degree or other credential. An additional 1.1 million (29%) were still enrolled at the end of 2018.
The median age of completers was 30. The majority (54%) were women. New completers tend to resemble the ethnic makeup of college graduates in general, but African Americans and Hispanics were over-represented among the SCND group earning a Bachelor’s or Associate degree, while white students were over-represented among those completing a certificate.
Both re-enrollment and degree completion were associated with prior academic progress. Students with at least two years of college under their belt (the so-called potential completers) returned to school at a 24% rate, more than twice as often as those who had completed only a single term (9%). A third of students who had finished at least two years of college completed college upon their return, compared to 22% of those with only a single term of prior enrollment.
The likelihood of earning a degree declined as the length of students’ “stop-out” from college increased. Students who re-enrolled within three years of their last enrollment were 50% more likely to complete than those who re-enrolled after four or five years. And most completers finished their studies within two years of re-enrolling, without transferring or dropping out again.
Across different higher education sectors, public community colleges awarded the most credentials to SCND returners. Sixty percent of completers earned their credential from a community college. The most common majors were business and management, liberal arts/general studies, and health professions.
What are the implications?
The first conclusion to be drawn from these data is that despite personal obstacles, financial hurdles, and a general policy indifference to this population, 54% of the 3.8 million students who returned to college in the past five years after having dropped out either earned a degree/credential or are still pursuing one.
Second, a lot more NDSC students are out there, with a sizable group – about 3.5 million – that’s already finished two years of college. States need to identify these students and make new investments in their community colleges to serve them because the NSC study shows that among NDSC returners, most will continue at a community college in their current state.
Third, traditional four-year institutions need to align their student support services, class scheduling, transfer policies and financial aid with the unique needs of returning-to-college adults, modeling them more closely perhaps on the policies employed at leading on-line institutions – like Western Governors University – that awarded a disproportionate share of the Bachelor’s degrees earned by the SCND completers.
And finally, this report is simply great news, a welcome affirmation of the grit, the determination and the ability of adults who muster the motivation to return to college. They deserve a salute.
