College Dropouts

Chad,
I wholeheartedly disagree that "some college, no degree" = dropout.
It took me 8 years to finish college, since I had to put myself through it, so, at the age of 25, I would've answered that census question as "some college, no degree". No, I wasn't a drop out. At the age of 26 I got a BS in Engineering. Two of my closest friends from that time also got their BS in Engineering after 25. One got married right out of HS and started a family, then 3 years after HS went to college, the other was in a situation similar to mine and took 9 years to finish. Neither of us at any time dropped out, yet, all of us, at the age of 25 would've answered "some college, no degree".

For another scenario, my oldest brother went straight from High School to working. At the age of 30, he got a pretty good entry-level job working for a state agency. However, as he started moving up, he realized he lacked some skills to get promoted, so he took some courses at the community college to learn computers, word processing, and excel. Again, he would have answered as "some college, no degree", but he never was a college dropout. As Anonymous before me stated, he never intended to get a degree.

First off 17% isn't almost 38%, the number of "dropouts" as compared to all college degrees combined as stated above. Second, if the students who left without a degree didn't receive the one they sought then they're dropouts. Some of the 17% may have never intended to complete a degree. Additionally, some of the students with associate's degrees may have received them as a consolation prize making them dropout equivalents. There is too much information lacking from this simple graphic to label populations and draw conclusions.