Persistence, Retention Among Certain Freshmen Reach Highs

Black and Hispanic students who began college in fall 2024 remained in college and returned to the same institution the following fall at the highest rates in a decade, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center’s latest analysis of persistence and retention among first-year college students.

From fall 2024 to fall 2025, the rates for Black and Hispanic students who persisted, or remained in college, sat at 70 percent and 74.5 percent, respectively, up 1.4 and 1.5 percentage points. Their retention rates also climbed one point and 1.5 points, respectively, reaching 59.6 percent for Black students and 66.9 percent for Hispanic students.

First- to second-year persistence is a significant indicator of a student’s likelihood of attaining a college degree in a timely manner, according to previous research by the NSCRC. Persistence and retention rates also tend to signify how connected students are to college after entering, Matthew Holsapple, senior director of research at the NSCRC, said in a news release. “This year’s results show steady first-year momentum overall, while some groups of students are seeing especially encouraging gains,” he said.

For Yolanda Watson Spiva, president of Complete College America, a national nonprofit focused on increasing college-completion rates, the increased persistence and retention rates for Black and Hispanic students signal the progress organizations like hers have made in encouraging institutions to do more to keep students in college.

The narrative regarding which students belong in college and who deserves to attain a college degree has shifted, Watson Spiva said. Colleges and universities have increasingly turned away from their “sink-or-swim mentality” over the last 10 to 15 years and moved toward building systems that support students, she said.

“There is a more core belief that students deserve to be there, and I think people see that what students are doing in college is really about helping them to be successful—not just for themselves, but for their families and in their lifetime,” Watson Spiva said.

Rates for Native American first-year students in fall 2024 also saw one-year gains, with a 65.7 percent persistence rate and 56.5 percent retention rate for fall 2025.

Decade-high persistence and attainment rates applied to part-time students who started college in fall 2024 as well; 54.1 percent returned for fall 2025, a 1.3-percentage-point increase from the cohort who entered college in fall 2023. Part-time students enrolled at four-year institutions saw the greatest increase in persistence and retention rates compared to those enrolled at other types of institutions.

Colleges and universities are being more intentional about how they engage part-time students, Watson Spiva said, marking a shift in the perception of those who take a reduced credit load each semester.

“A lot of students are not taking, necessarily, the full load, but there’s also a healthy respect for the ambitions of those students and their rights to be on the campus and have a successful experience as well,” Watson Spiva said.

Student transfer rates also remained low, according to the NSCRC report, with 83.2 percent of incoming students in 2024 remaining at their college or university for their first two terms; 2.6 percent transferred to another institution for the spring semester, about the same as the prior year. By fall 2025, the transfer rate grew to 8 percent, though 69.1 percent of incoming students in 2024 remained at their starting institution, similar to the previous year.

By major, engineering undergraduates who started in fall 2024 had the highest persistence rate (93.1 percent) going into their second fall, while computer science students had the lowest persistence rate (85 percent).