Hello NCL colleagues, I just came across an interesting new study about why community college students *who are doing well academically *nevertheless leave before completing a degree. The study surveyed more than 2,500 former community college students across five different educational institutions in Florida. As this Twitter thread summarizes, people typically leave because of various financial barriers <https://twitter.com/JustinOrtagus/status/1353719529466114049>, health emergencies, and childcare issues. Not surprising, but good to have it confirmed. This is a PRE-Covid survey, so the pandemic was not a factor. However, *many survey respondents nonetheless cited factors related to online learning or digital access as one reason they left college*. See excerpted findings below: - Figure 7 indicates the extent to which different subgroups of students selected “difficulty learning on [their] own in online settings.” - As an example, 33.6% of students with lower GPAs noted struggles with online learning as related to their decision to leave college without a degree, whereas only 16.6% of students with higher GPAs cited difficulties with online learning. - We also show that a larger share of Black (28.4%) and Hispanic students (32.1%) noted challenges with online learning as a factor behind their decision to exit early relative to the proportion of White students (19.6%) who struggled with online learning. - Similarly, we find that *difficulties associated with “unreliable internet access”* (Figure 8) were more prominent among Black students (12.5%) when compared to White students (3.7%) in our sample. Check out the full paper <https://ihe.education.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/IHE-Working-Paper-0121.pdf> for more. -- *Amanda Bergson-Shilcock*, Senior Fellow *National Skills Coalition* Pronouns: she/her/hers 1250 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 200, Washington DC 20036 215-285-2860 (mobile) *www.nationalskillscoalition.org* <http://www.nationalskillscoalition.org/> -- *Amanda Bergson-Shilcock*, Senior Fellow *National Skills Coalition* Pronouns: she/her/hers 1250 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 200, Washington DC 20036 215-285-2860 (mobile) *www.nationalskillscoalition.org* <http://www.nationalskillscoalition.org/>