College Completion Rates Trending Up

Inside Higher Ed

Kathryn Palmer

December 4, 2024

Fewer college students are stopping out before finishing their degrees, according to data the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center released this morning. The report found that students who started college for the first time in 2018 had a six-year credential completion rate of 61.1 percent—a 0.5-percentage-point increase over those who started in 2017.

It’s the highest six-year completion rate of the 12 cohorts tracked in the first annual “Yearly Progress and Completion” report, a new report series containing elements previously published in the NSCRC’s “Yearly Success and Progress” and “Completing College” reports. Eight-year completion rates for students who enrolled in college in fall 2016 were also the highest among those 12 cohorts, at 64.7 percent.

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