Average Retention Rate At North Carolina 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 North Carolina colleges is 67.49% for full-time students and 52.03% for part-time students. 51,103 out of 66,642 full-time first-year students continued their study in next year at North Carolina colleges. In public North Carolina colleges, the retention rate is 65% and private schools' rate is 68% By school levels, the retention rate at four-years colleges is 72% and community colleges' rate is 61% in North Carolina.

The next schools are the top 5 North Carolina colleges that have the highest retention rate. Duke University has the highest retention rate of 97% among North Carolina colleges. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Wake Forest University also have higher rate of 95% and 95% 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 North Carolina collegesNumbers in parentheses in each column indicate the number of students in the corresponding category.