The architecture of attrition: Why do New Majority Learners disproportionately drop out of college?

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Are low grades alone to blame for higher drop out rates?

Historically, US higher education institutions have viewed student attrition through a remedial lens, assuming that college dropouts are primarily driven by academic insufficiency or failing grades (Tight, 2020).

While poor grades can certainly be a factor in choosing to leave higher education, structural factors still prevail in underpinning the likelihood of a student choosing to drop out (Bäulke et al., 2022).

A recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that first-generation students who encounter negative grade events in their first year of higher education have a 40% likelihood of dropping out - 5% higher than observationally identical continuing generation students who face the same setback (NBER, 2025). Rather than dropping out, continuing-generation students are instead more likely to simply switch majors (NBER, 2025).

However, academic underperformance alone is insufficient to explain attrition patterns, as large numbers of academically stable students also exit higher education prematurely.

First year students with a GPA below 2.0 have a 75% departure rate, with this rate falling to 21% once a GPA between 2.5 and 3.0 has been achieved (Westrick et al., 2023).

A GPA within the 2.5 to 3.0 range indicates that students are academically secure, possessing the intellectual aptitude to satisfy institutional benchmarks and pass their courses (Westrick et al., 2023). Yet, over 1 in 5 of students within this GPA range continue on their path to leaving higher education.

Their decision to drop out therefore cannot be attributed to a deficit in learning capability or a failure to comprehend course material.
Instead, this academic stability demonstrates that non-academic, external pressures are actively pulling capable students out of the academic pipeline (Bean & Metzner, 1985; Sanborn et al., 2024).

Therefore, when institutions focus their retention efforts exclusively on remedial academic tutoring or grade-monitoring systems, they misdiagnose the root cause of attrition (Tight, 2020).

For New Majority Learners, a passing grade is a necessary, but ultimately insufficient condition for persistence. Instead, their survival depends upon them not only succeeding academically, but also navigating a complex mix of structural hurdles that operate entirely outside the classroom walls (Bean & Metzner, 1985; Sanborn et al., 2024)

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How do time and flexibility factor into retention?

Traditional higher education architecture assumes that learning occurs in a dedicated, singular space, operating on the premise that the traditional student is unencumbered by domestic or financial responsibilities (Todd, 2023).

For a New Majority Learner balancing a 30-hour work week or childcare, the rigid timelines of standard campuses act as an active exclusion mechanism, driving the attrition gaps between themselves and their full-time traditional peers (Sallee et al 2024).

This generates an acute crisis of ‘time poverty’ for New Majority Learners (Wladis, Hachey, & Conway, 2018).

When balancing the competing demands of employment, caregiving, and academics, student-parents and working students are left with virtually zero margin for error (Sallee, Lewis, & Kieffer, 2024). For example, students actively working while enrolled face immense time pressures, often falling short  of institutional expectations for independent study hours simply because they lack the necessary time and financial resources (Wright et al., 2024).

In this context, typical university practices, such as mandatory in-person attendance or last-minute timetable changes, create severe logistical conflicts that disproportionately penalize these learners (Moreau & Kerner, 2012; Todd, 2023; Wright et al., 2024).

Because the time constraints of a traditional university force a strict separation between a student's academic life and their personal responsibilities, New Majority Learners are frequently forced to choose between their education and their families or livelihoods (Holmes & Nikiforidou, 2023; Sallee et al., 2024). This operational friction drives a gap in degree completion (Bean & Metzner, 1985).

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Why are New Majority Learners more susceptible to the hidden curriculum?

The demographic evolution of higher education has brought first-generation college students to the forefront of the student body, yet institutional design continues to assume a baseline of inherited collegiate literacy (Cataldi et al., 2018; Farris, 2022).

First-generation students represent a significant subgroup within the broader population of New Majority Learners, whose experiences often intersect with other non-traditional student identities and structural barriers. As such, the challenges faced by first-generation learners reflect wider institutional tensions surrounding equity, access, and student support within contemporary higher education (Farris, 2022; López et al., 2023).

Despite 54% of all undergraduate students identifying as first-generation, only 24% successfully graduate, compared to 59% of their continuing-generation peers (First Gen Forward, 2026). Closing this gap would produce an estimated 4.4 million additional graduates and a $700 billion net benefit to the U.S. economy (First Gen Forward, 2026).

This illustrates the protective power of generational social capital (Cataldi et al., 2018; Ricks & Warren, 2021). Students whose parents have earned a bachelor's degree possess an invisible framework of support - familial knowledge that is passed down on factors like how to navigate financial aid, access academic advising, utilize office hours, and overcome administrative roadblocks (Cataldi et al., 2018; Farris, 2022).

Conversely, first-generation New Majority Learners often confront the ‘hidden curriculum’ of higher education entirely in isolation (Babineau, 2018.; Farris, 2022). When academic or administrative friction arises, the lack of a familiar sounding board or experiential guidance amplifies feelings of institutional alienation (Ricks & Warren, 2021).

The fact that first-generation learners are more than twice as unlikely to graduate as their continuing-generation peers is not a reflection of a lower commitment to education; rather, it represents the penalty of navigating a complex, bureaucratic system without an inherited roadmap (Babineau, 2018; Farris, 2022).

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How should institutions combat increased attrition?

The evidence presented throughout this review demonstrates that when it comes to the New Majority Learner, attrition cannot be understood through the lens of academic performance alone.

While traditional frameworks continue to position dropouts as the outcome of individual academic deficiency, the experiences of New Majority Learners reveal a far more complex reality shaped by structural friction, institutional rigidity, and cumulative external pressures (Tight, 2020, Sallee et al., 2024; Sanborn et al., 2024).

These students are disproportionately exposed to systems designed around outdated assumptions of what a ‘traditional’ student looks like (Todd, 2023, Cahalan et al., 2024). Consequently, as higher education demographics continue to evolve, institutions that fail to adapt their operational architecture are at risk of reproducing attrition (Chen et al., 2020).

This reframes the role of higher education institutions. Rather than acting solely as evaluators of academic performance, colleges and universities must increasingly function as friction architects of accessible learning ecosystems capable of reducing student’s unnecessary operational burden (Lawrence et al., 2019; Sanborn et al., 2024).

Retention, therefore, should not be viewed exclusively as a question of student resilience, but as a measure of institutional adaptability.

As the New Majority Learner becomes the defining profile of modern higher education, the institutions most capable of improving retention outcomes will likely be those that move beyond reactive support models and instead proactively redesign the learning experience around flexibility, accessibility, and cognitive sustainability (Todd, 2023, Sallee, et al., 2024).

The future of student success may therefore depend less on identifying which students are ‘at risk’, and more on examining which institutional systems continue to place unnecessary risk upon them.