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The Nuanced Nature of ‘Some College, No Credential’ Adults in America

ByBlake Decker

In the first post of our fall blog series, we explored data from a new report by the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) Research Center related to the “Some College, No Credential” adult population in America. According to the NSC, there were approximately 43.1-million “Some College, No Credential” (SCNC) adults across the United States in 2023. Out of the SCNC total, there were 37.6 million “working age” adults (18-64 years old) classified as SCNC in 2023, with 2.6 million of the SCNC working adults living in Texas.

However, not all SCNC adults have the same likelihood to return to campus to re-enroll and complete a credential. To further understanding about the nuanced nature of the SCNC adult population in the United States, the NSC Research Center also included two sub-categories in their data: “Recent Stopouts” and “Potential Completers.” We explore these groups in the remainder of this blog post.

Recent Stopouts

By definition, an SCNC adult “must have been stopped out for at least three terms prior to the start of an academic year” (NSC Definitions). To be considered a Recent Stopout, a student had to be newly identified as an SCNC adult during the reporting year. For example, the 2023 data included those who stopped out between January 2022 and July 2023, meaning they were last enrolled during the 2021 calendar year. The NSC does not specify a threshold for either number of hours or semesters completed to be part of the Recent Stopout group in the SCNC working adult population, an important distinction when compared to the “Potential Completers” metric. For institutions looking to re-engage with stopped-out students who are SCNC adults, Recent Stopouts is likely one of the first groups of students to be targeted via intentional, systematic re-enrollment efforts.

  • At a national level, 5.6% of the 37.6 million SCNC working adults (18-64 years old) were considered to be “Recent Stopouts” in 2023. That percentage equates to 2.1 million Recent Stopout (adults under the age of 65) in the United States in the 2023 NSC data.
  • The state with the highest percentage of Recent Stopouts was Arizona, which had 9% (65,502) of its 726,264 SCNC Under 65 adults identified as Recent Stopouts in the NSC data. Delaware (8.8%), Idaho (8.8%), and Utah (7.9%) were the other states that had at least 7% of their SCNC working age population who were identified as Recent Stopouts by the NSC.
  • In Texas, Recent Stopouts comprised 6.6% (175,109 out of 2,642,574) of the SCNC Under 65 group, which was the sixth-highest state in the NSC data. The Recent Stopouts share of SCNC Under 65 group in Texas was higher than Georgia (6.6%), Florida (6.2%), California (5.8%), and New York (4.7%).

Potential Completers

“Potential Completers” are distinct from Recent Stopouts in terms of the window for previous attendance as well as length and intensity of previous enrollments. Potential Completers are SCNC adults with “at least two years of full-time equivalent enrollment in the decade prior to the start of the academic year” (NSC Definitions). For example, the 2023 data included Potential Completers who met the enrollment requirements (2 or more years of full-time equivalent enrollment) sometime after 2013. Potential Completers are an important subgroup of SCNC adults because their accumulated credits and relatively recent enrollment increase the likelihood that they would be able to complete a degree or other credential if they re-enrolled in an institution of higher education.

  • At a national level, 7.2% of the 37.6 million SCNC working adults (18-64 years old) were considered to be “Potential Completers” in 2023. That percentage equates to 2.7 million Potential Completers (adults under the age of 65) in the United States in the 2023 NSC data.
  • Arizona also had the highest percentage of Potential Completers at 11% (80K out of 726K), with Delaware (10.9%), Alabama (9.6%), and North Dakota (9.1%) each above the 9-percent threshold.
  • Across Texas, there were more than 206K Potential Completers in the SCNC Under 65 group in 2023. With 2.6-million SCNC working adults in Texas, the state’s 7.8% Potential Completers share was 14th highest in comparison to other all other states. Texas’s share of Potential Completers was lower than New York (8.2%) and Georgia (8.2%) and above Florida (7.1%) and California (7%) in the NSC data.

So What?

Historically in higher education, enrollment and Semester Credit Hours (SCH) generated have been the sole determinants of state-based formula funding. Although recent policymaking in Texas has shifted state funding for two-year institutions to a performance funding model, institutions remain reliant on increasing enrollments to support the ongoing and future efforts of their college or university. However, given the finite resources available for growing an institution’s student body, enrollment managers must be strategic in their efforts to recruit students. This is especially true when the topic is how to recover stopped-out students.

While the Texas data in the NSC’s report show 2.6-million “Some College, No Credential” adults (18-64 years old) in the state, the proportion of those who are more likely to re-enroll (Recent Stopouts) and complete a credential (Potential Completers) result in a recruitment pool that is much smaller than the overall SCNC counts seem to indicate. The NSC data for these two subgroups highlights how difficult enrollment recovery efforts can be and how important it is that re-enrollment campaigns are designed to target those students who offer the highest ROI potential in terms of resources allocated that result in re-enrollment and completion for stopped-out students.

The NSC Research Center’s data were not limited to just identifying the total number of SCNC adults along with Recent Stopouts and Potential Completers. Their data also provide insights into outcomes for those SCNC adults who re-enrolled in higher education, including first- and second-year persistence rates and credential completions. We will turn our attention to these student success metrics in the next few posts in our fall blog series.