Average Retention Rate At Alabama Colleges

The retention rate is the percentage of first-time students who attend and continue their study in next year at colleges. The low retention rate means that more students transfer out to or stop/pause the program at a school. In general, high ranked colleges or special purpose colleges' retention rate is higher than others.

The average retention rate of Alabama colleges is 66.25% for full-time students and 42.48% for part-time students. 28,864 out of 38,527 full-time first-year students continued their study in next year at Alabama colleges. In public Alabama colleges, the retention rate is 66% and private schools' rate is 70% By school levels, the retention rate at four-years colleges is 70% and community colleges' rate is 61% in Alabama.

The next schools are the top 5 Alabama colleges that have the highest retention rate. Auburn University has the highest retention rate of 93% among Alabama colleges. The University of Alabama and Samford University also have higher rate of 89% and 89% respectively. For the ranking, we exclude community colleges and four-colleges with less than 1,000 first-time students.

The following table summarizes the retention rate and number of students by attending status for Alabama collegesNumbers in parentheses in each column indicate the number of students in the corresponding category.