Average Retention Rate At Missouri 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 Missouri colleges is 71.76% for full-time students and 52.48% for part-time students. 29,664 out of 40,712 full-time first-year students continued their study in next year at Missouri colleges. In public Missouri colleges, the retention rate is 74% and private schools' rate is 69% By school levels, the retention rate at four-years colleges is 71% and community colleges' rate is 63% in Missouri.

The next schools are the top 5 Missouri colleges that have the highest retention rate. Washington University in St Louis has the highest retention rate of 96% among Missouri colleges. Saint Louis University and University of Missouri-Columbia also have higher rate of 89% and 88% 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 Missouri collegesNumbers in parentheses in each column indicate the number of students in the corresponding category.