One in four current undergraduate students are at risk of not completing college

Washington, DC, March 26, 2024 

The 2024 Sallie Mae/Ipsos How America Completes College survey explores the current experiences and challenges facing current undergraduate students to understand the key barriers impacting students' ability to complete their degree. Additionally, this edition of the survey including young adults who started but did not finish college, as a way to identify common experiences and risk factors for non-completion. For the full report and additional analysis, please visit Sallie Mae.

Key Insights

• One in four (24%) current undergraduate students are identified as "at risk", meaning they have seriously considered leaving school or have been at risk of dismissal from school. Conversely, 64% of current students are on track, having never considered leaving school or been at risk of dismissal.
• Notable demographic differences are seen between the groups of at-risk students and on-track students. Compared to those on track to graduate, at risk students are more likely to be the first in their family to attend college, Hispanic or Black, or to have been raised in lower-income households. 
• Differences are also seen in the mindsets of these two groups of students entering college, with the majority of on-track students saying they have always known they would go to college while over a third of at-risk students did not decide to attend college until their junior or senior years of high school.
• When asked their primary reasons for considering leaving school, at-risk students list financial challenges as their number one motivator to not finish their degree. Notably, while nearly half (46%) of on-track students created a plan to pay for all years of college, just one-quarter (25%) of at-risk students did the same. Further, about half of at-risk students said it is difficult for them to meet the cost of tuition (53%) and the cost of additional college expenses, such as textbooks, living costs or food (50%).
• Other top reasons for considering leaving college included changes in motivation or mental health challenges. At-risk students were more likely to express difficulty making friends, prioritizing their mental health,  or feeling confident in their overall career direction.
• Non-Completers are adults under 30 who started college but left without obtaining a degree or completing their program. Similar to current at-risk students, over 2 in 5 Non-Completers indicated financial challenges or a change in focus or motivation contributed to their decision to leave school.

About the Study

These are the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted on behalf of Sallie Mae between June 2 and June 26, 2023. For this survey, a sample of 1,029 current college students ages 18-30 and 427 adults who started but did not complete college ages 18-30 from the continental U.S., Alaska, and Hawaii were interviewed online in English.

The sample was randomly drawn from The Generation Lab Student Panel and General Youth Panel. and does not rely on a population frame in the traditional sense. The Student panel includes students from across the country, including those attending community colleges, HBCUs, and women-only colleges. The General youth panel is recruited to closely resemble a probability-based sample through academically-guided, advertisement-based, geographic recruitment with quota sampling. After a sample has been obtained, Ipsos calibrates respondent characteristics to be representative of the U.S. Population for college students and adults who have not completed college using standard procedures such as raking-ratio adjustments. The source of these population targets is U.S. Census 2021 American Community Survey data. The sample drawn for this study reflects fixed sample targets on demographics. Post-hoc weights were made to the population characteristics on gender, race/ethnicity, and type of educational institution.  

Statistical margins of error are not applicable to online non-probability polls. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error and measurement error. Where figures do not sum to 100, this is due to the effects of rounding. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll has a credibility interval of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points for all respondents. Ipsos calculates a design effect (DEFF) for each study based on the variation of the weights, following the formula of Kish (1965). This study had a credibility interval adjusted for design effect of the following (n=1,456, DEFF=1.5, adjusted Confidence Interval=+/-4.6 percentage points).

About Ipsos

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