Financial Challenges in Emerging Adulthood and Students’ Decisions to Stop Out of College

Abstract

By examining the college attendance patterns of youth who came of age during the Great Recession, our study investigates the economic factors in emerging adulthood that may contribute to the limited upward educational mobility experienced by a contemporary cohort of young adults. Drawing on telephone survey and in-depth interview data gathered from 18- to 26-year-olds, we analyze patterns of stopping out—or leaving college with intentions to return. Our findings demonstrate that financial considerations in emerging adulthood—including receipt of government financial aid, attending to family financial obligations, paying for housing expenses, and rising tuition rates—play a key role in shaping pathways through community and 4-year colleges. We argue that in seeking to understand inequality in educational and labor outcomes, researchers should make conceptual distinctions between financial factors connected to an individual’s family background, and related, but temporally distinct financial issues experienced during the transition to adulthood.