You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
Some states are making gains in re-enrolling students who have stopped out.
vitranc/E+/Getty Images
Even as more states and colleges invest in efforts to improve postsecondary persistence, the total number of adults in the U.S. who have completed some college credits but not earned a credential (SCNC) grew 2.2 percent, or by nearly 800,000 people, between 2022–23 and 2023–24, according to new data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
The report, published today, highlights the disparity between the thousands of students who leave college each year before earning a certificate or degree and those who eventually return to attain a postsecondary credential.
“It’s clear that higher education regularly produces more students leaving without a credential than students returning and earning one,” said Matthew Holsapple, senior director of research at the NSCRC, during a press briefing. “This is a persistent challenge and an opportunity.”
Between January 2022 and July 2023, approximately 2.1 million students left college without a credential, which was a decrease of 156,000 students compared to the same period starting one year prior. Across the country, 37.5 million people under age 65 now fall into the “some college, no credential” (SCNC) population, and an additional 5.5 million adults older than 65 fit in this group as well.
Defining Terms
Researchers classify some college, no credential individuals as those who enrolled in postsecondary education at least once since Jan. 1, 1993, but have not earned any degree or certificate and have had no enrollment for at least three consecutive terms as of July 31, 2023.
Re-enrollment of these students continues to grow year over year, highlighting effective measures to reduce attainment gaps, Holsapple said; more than a million SCNC individuals re-enrolled or earned a credential during 2023–24. Of those who returned to complete a credential, the greatest share earned a certificate (43 percent) or associate degree (31 percent) within their first year, corresponding to national completion trends.
Gauging Re-Enrollment Growth
All states saw increases in the size of their SCNC population in the past two years, but 42 states and the District of Columbia also saw increases in their SCNC re-enrollment rates compared to the previous academic year, showing modest efforts to recapture stopped-out students.
Colorado saw the greatest gains in re-enrollment and completion of SCNC individuals, possibly tied to the state’s Colorado Re-Engaged (CORE) initiative, researchers said. Under CORE, four-year bachelor’s degree–granting institutions can award an associate degree to eligible students who have earned at least 70 credits. During the 2023–24 academic year, 2,100 SCNC students in Colorado completed a credential, and 800 of those did not need to re-enroll.
Connecticut, Louisiana, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Carolina, Vermont and Wyoming were among the states that did not see re-enrollment growth year over year, said Jeremy Cohen, lead researcher on the report. Oklahoma saw the largest decline, re-enrolling 13.8 percent fewer students.
Massachusetts, which launched MassReconnect in 2023, saw SCNC re-enrollment grow 35.2 percent between 2022–23 and 2023–24, the greatest year-over-year increase among states.
Over the past three years, more college and state leaders have turned their attention to re-enrolling students who left higher education. Previous research shows a large number of these students exit higher education not due to academic concerns but to personal life challenges or financial barriers.
The NSCRC report found that among students who left higher education and returned to finish their credential (n=62,000), approximately 25 percent earned a credential without re-enrolling, which researchers believe is tied to initiatives like CORE that reduce barriers to attainment. Other causes for the trend could be students who simply needed to remove academic holds or who finished extended course incompletes they received due to crises.
Online, 2-Year Colleges
The average SCNC student who returns to higher education re-enrolls at a different institution from the one they left, with two-thirds of re-enrollees switching to an institution in a different sector. One-third move from one community college to another, and one in 10 move from a community college to a primarily online institution.
“On the one hand, it allows students to find institutions that better fit their needs and circumstances,” Holsapple said. “But on the other hand, it can create complications in credit transfer and alignment of academic programs, which can hinder their progress toward a credential.”
Community colleges and primarily online institutions have the lowest rates of credential earning among re-enrollees, compared to traditional four-year institutions.
Some populations are more likely to return to the college where they started, including those who had completed two years’ worth of credits (44 percent) or those who had stopped out within the past four or five semesters (50 percent). “These patterns suggest that recency and accumulated credits are strong predictors of successful engagement,” Holsapple said.
NSCRC researchers believe knowing these trends can help institutions and policymakers better target efforts to engage stopped-out populations to reach attainment goals, according to the report.
