Nearly 1 Million Students with Some College Returned and Earned a Degree Since 2014

“Some College, No Degree” Report Reveals 3.5 Million Americans with Some College Have High Potential to Return and Finish College

The United States saw nearly one million former students, in just five years, return to postsecondary education and earn their first undergraduate credential, according to a new report, “Some College, No Degree: A 2019 Snapshot for the Nation and 50 States,” released today.

The research also reveals that an additional 1.1 million former students came back to college and are still enrolled in pursuit of a credential. Taken together , the combined success and progress rate for the 3.8 million returning “Some College, No Degree” students equates to 54 percent.

“The returning students and new completers identified in this report should be celebrated, but they have been mostly invisible until now,” said Doug Shapiro, Executive Director, National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. “The graduation rates commonly used to measure college performance in the U.S. counted them as dropouts when they left and ignored them when they returned, yet their successes today represent great benefits to themselves, their states, and the nation.”

“Building on the 2014 report, the Clearinghouse Research Center’s predictive profiles of potential completers still hold,” said Sally Johnstone, President, National Center for Higher Education Management Systems. “This offers state planners critical information regarding who these learners are and how to create academic programs and services that can really meet their needs if they are to complete degrees to help states meet their future workforce demands.”

Implications for Higher Education:

• The report points the way for colleges and states to identify the “Some College, No Degree” students, and where they are most likely to re-enroll and graduate, and what types of credentials they are likely to pursue.
• 3.5 million adults are identified as potential completers today, those with at least two years’ worth of academic progress up until their last enrollment. These students are the most likely to return and finish college.
• Returning adult students are more likely to re-enroll and complete in a different institution than their college or university of last enrollment, but in the same state.
• These students are more likely to re-enroll in public institutions, and their most common destination is a local community college. Associate degrees and certificates are the most common credentials earned: 60% of all completers.

Other Highlights Include:

• About 940,000 students identified as “Some College, No Degree” five years ago, in the Research Center’s first report, have since re-enrolled and are now new completers.
• The number of Americans with “Some College, No Degree” who are no longer enrolled rose to 36 million, up from 29 million as of December 2013.
• Ten percent of this population are “potential completers” who had already made at least two years’ worth of academic progress before stopping out. Six out of every ten potential completers are below age 30 (58 percent), which is more than two times as large as that of the overall “Some College, No Degree” population (23 percent).
• Completers typically finished within two years of re-enrolling, without transferring or stopping out again.
• States vary in the prevalence of potential completers in the overall “Some College, No Degree” population, from a low of five percent to a high of 15 percent.

• About 940,000 students identified as Some College, No Degree five years ago, in the first report, have since re-enrolled and are now new completers. In addition, more than a million are still enrolled as of December 2018, for a combined success and progress rate of 54 percent among re-enrollees.
• Compared to where they last enrolled, returning students were more likely to have re-enrolled at public institutions, and less likely to have done so at private institutions. But online enrollees were more likely to have returned to online institutions.
• Completers tend to finish at the institution where they first re-enrolled and complete within two years of re-enrolling, without stopping out.
• Completers typically re-enrolled and finished in the same state where they last enrolled, with a few exceptions.

Background on “Some College, No Degree” report series
The “Some College, No Degree” report series seeks to understand the educational trajectories of millions of Americans who left postsecondary education without receiving a degree or certificate. As the second in the series, this report offers insights about their subsequent enrollments and completions, based on the most current national data that tracks individual students over time, across institutions and across state lines since the first report was released in 2014.