Affluent White Students Are Skipping College, and No One Is Sure Why

The Chronicle of Higher Education

Lee Gardner

December 3, 2024

White students are falling out of higher education more quickly than any other racial group, and recent data suggests that middle- and upper-income white students are skipping college at a higher rate than their lower-income peers. That flies in the face of entrenched narratives about more-affluent white students following a well-marked path to college. Experts can only speculate about why it might be happening.

Data released in October by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center indicate that fewer white undergraduates from more affluent neighborhoods have enrolled in college over the past six years. This is happening as white students from lower-income neighborhoods enroll at slightly higher rates, and as Black and Hispanic undergraduate enrollment across the income spectrum has increased.

Colleges and advocates have spent years pushing to get more students of color into higher education, and the data reflect some progress. But there is also a mystery here. A common narrative is that a strong economy, and growing mistrust of colleges among conservatives, has encouraged more young white people — especially men from rural areas — to skip college and enter the work force. That’s not what the data show. The enrollment declines are coming from the country’s more affluent neighborhoods, and the more affluent the neighborhoods, the steeper the decline, on average.

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