Average Retention Rate At Minnesota 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 Minnesota colleges is 67.37% for full-time students and 50.57% for part-time students. 24,936 out of 33,427 full-time first-year students continued their study in next year at Minnesota colleges. In public Minnesota colleges, the retention rate is 62% and private schools' rate is 75% By school levels, the retention rate at four-years colleges is 75% and community colleges' rate is 58% in Minnesota.

The next schools are the top 5 Minnesota colleges that have the highest retention rate. University of Minnesota-Twin Cities has the highest retention rate of 92% among Minnesota colleges. University of St Thomas and University of Minnesota-Duluth also have higher rate of 85% and 77% 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 Minnesota collegesNumbers in parentheses in each column indicate the number of students in the corresponding category.