In Which Academic Year Do Stopouts Most Frequently Occur?

Posted by Benchmarking Project on July 31, 2017

Benchmarking Breakdown: In Which Academic Year Do Stopouts Most Frequently Occur?
By Bill DeBaun, Director of Data and Evaluation

Stopouts are an unfortunate reality in the college access and success field, but knowing when they occur can help NCAN-member programs to prevent them. Using student data collected from members through the Benchmarking Project, this Benchmarking Breakdown examines when stopouts occurred for students from the high school graduating class of 2010. These data come from Round 4 of the Benchmarking Project, which examined the postsecondary enrollment and completion outcomes of students from the 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2015 high school graduating classes. This round of the project includes data from 65 member programs.

The visuals below include data on all students from the high school graduating class of 2010 who had a postsecondary enrollment in the first academic year following high school (N=23,439). NCAN noted the year in which a student experienced his or her first stopout; this analysis does not capture any stopouts to the first. Below, we visualize the overall distribution of when students’ first stopouts occurred. This analysis cannot account for stopouts within the first year, nor can we identify in which particular semester stopouts occurred.

http://www.collegeaccess.org/NCAN_Member_Program_Benchmarking_Project