[1] Transfer rates are very high in the United States with 60% of all bachelor's degrees being awarded to students that began their college at another institution.
In a Budny longitudinal study of Purdue engineering students, it was shown that first semester GPA was a better predictor of retention than SAT scores.
The level of course taken (for example, whether Calculus I or Precalculus) is less of a predictor of persistence at university than the grade earned in the mathematics class taken.
The cost of public and private institutions in the 1999–2000 school year, which includes tuition and on campus housing, averaged $7,302 and $20,277, respectively.
This has led to problematic outsourcing strategies, such as the case of the University of Texas' system $10 million investment into the private company Myedu.