Understanding and Combating Student Melt

When Students and Colleges Lose Every year, hundreds of thousands of current and would-be college students fall through the cracks. For current students, the roadblocks they face as they attempt to remain enrolled continue to present themselves after the abundant freshman year support has fallen away. For incoming students, the final stretch in a college-bound marathon proves to be the most difficult part of the journey, with many failing to cross the finish line. For those students that stop-out mid-degree, the failure to complete can leave them worse off financially than if they had not pursued a degree at all. And for the students who never even cross the threshold, their lack of a degree can cost them over $1 million in potential earnings over the course of their lifetime. 1 The costs of attrition are not limited to students, however. To the colleges that lose these students, the effects are felt not just in a decline to the population, shrinking numbers and fewer, smaller classes, but also in declining revenues. On a national level, the cost of student attrition comes close to $16.5 billion. 2

Losses of this magnitude contribute directly to the abysmal six-year average graduation rate of just 58 percent. 3 If we were grading colleges on their ability to graduate the students they enroll, they would receive failing marks.

Based on this data, institutions of higher learning cannot afford to overlook the importance of getting students to and through college. Rather than continue to shuffle more applicants into the broken recruitment pipeline and hope that 58 percent come out on the other side, schools can take action to address the obstacles that keep 42 percent of students from reaching their goals. Two such obstacles exist in the form of summer melt and verification melt. The former can result in an attrition rate of 10-40 percent 4 , while the latter can cause 25 percent of enrolled students to abandon the financial aid process altogether, putting them at risk for dropping out. 5 By reviewing current research and best practices, we can better understand what causes these issues, how they contribute to student attrition, and how schools can take action to combat their negative effects to help students persist despite these hurdles.