It’s a two-sided dilemma. By 2031, fully 72 percent of the nation’s jobs will require an education beyond high school. Yet, only 55 percent of working-age Americans have earned a college degree or other credential with value. At the same time, U.S. colleges and universities are heading for a demographic drop-off: With a shrinking pool of 18-year-olds to recruit, enrollments nationwide are plunging, causing many colleges to eliminate majors, reduce programs, and, in some cases, close altogether.

The nation needs a better-educated, better-trained workforce. Many colleges need more students. So, higher education is starting to embrace at least one powerful strategy that addresses both challenges: aggressively recruiting people with college experience who stopped short of earning a degree and returning them to the classroom.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, this “some college, no credential” category defines more than 43 million working adults. It includes all kinds of people, from those who left school after only a semester to those who stopped out a few credits shy of graduation. The barriers to finishing college, both bachelor’s and associate programs, are many and varied: financial constraints, job responsibilities, physical and mental illness, family duties, scheduling conflicts, and an overall lack of direction. More students also face unstable housing situations, and many had their educational hopes dashed by not having a reliable way to get to school.

Even years after they left college, many one-time students who want to go back to school find themselves stymied. Putting an intimate face on this population, photojournalist Rachel Bujalski, with support from Lumina Foundation, chronicled the daily lives of seven individuals who went to college but stopped short of graduation. From across the country, they are a diverse group coping with a range of life challenges. What they share in common is unfulfilled educational promises.

For Americans, this cycle of missed opportunity limits individual opportunity and economic mobility. Addressing these educational barriers is crucial, not only for personal fulfillment but for strengthening the social fabric of American society.

Alina, 26, Chicago

A future can look very different from the one first imagined without ending the search for opportunity. Alina’s path is shaped by constant negotiation between responsibility and aspiration, movement and stillness, caring for others and preserving something for herself. She has not found an easy route forward, but she continues creating one each day.

For Alina, college was supposed to mark the beginning of a new life. She planned to attend Hawaii Pacific University, drawn to an environment far removed from the Chicago neighborhood where drugs and gang violence were a part of daily life.

Shortly before she was set to leave, Alina learned she was pregnant. She changed course, enrolling instead at National Louis University, close enough to commute from her home in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood. After her daughter was born, Alina tried to balance college with caring for an infant, managing postpartum depression and working 30 hours a week. Then came the added disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic and unreliable internet access. She left college after just one year.

Boxing remains an important part of Alina’s life. She began in middle school, when her mother encouraged her to learn self-defense and develop greater self-discipline.

She continues to teach and mentor young people in her community as a part-time coach, helping them build confidence, discipline and a sense of belonging.

Alina is saving money to finish college, with hopes of becoming a physical education teacher, boxing coach or personal trainer.

Amid work, parenting, and plans for the future, Alina looks for moments of peace. A devout Catholic who is proud of her Mexican heritage, she begins each morning with prayer and attends daily Mass whenever she can.

Alina enjoys spotting flowers growing throughout the city—small flashes of beauty in unexpected places.

Since these photographs were taken, Alina’s working life has changed. She left her job at the Chicago Youth Boxing Club and lost her part-time position at her daughter’s school following budget cuts. She now works full time at a Chevrolet dealership.

When Alina first planned to attend college in Hawaii, she hoped to be far away from the neighborhood where she had grown up. “I just wanted a place where I could find peace,” she says. That search continues, alongside the daily work of raising her daughter, supporting young people, and finding a way back to her own education.

Dupree, 42, Delray Beach, Florida

Dupree left college just 18 credits short of a degree, pulled home by concern for a younger cousin. Today, he leads a nonprofit supporting young people whose lives echo his own. His story reveals how family responsibilities can interrupt an education and how unfinished ambitions can still help shape a life of purpose.

Football opened a door to college that had once seemed distant for Dupree. Growing up amid instability in Delray Beach, Florida, he had few examples of academic success around him. Some family members dealt drugs, and police regularly raided his mother’s home. At Boca Raton High School, Dupree spent more time thinking about having fun than planning for higher education. But his ability on the football field earned him an opportunity to play at a community college in Minnesota, taking him far from the circumstances he had known. Once there, staying eligible to play mattered more to him than earning a degree. When his grades slipped and he lost financial aid, he left school and returned to Florida. Back home, he drifted into dealing drugs.

Dupree and his family make regular visits to his father’s grave in Sneads, Florida.

He credits his father with imposing discipline and modeling good morals, serving as a counterweight to other relatives who dealt drugs and served time in prison.

Today, Dupree draws on his experiences to lead the EJS Project, a nonprofit named after his father.

He mentors young people, supports families, and creates opportunities for youth navigating circumstances much like those that shaped his childhood.

Camouflaged and ready to hunt some white-tailed deer, Dupree pays a visit to his late father’s cherished horse, Cotton, with his family. Although he lives in coastal Delray Beach, Florida, the Panhandle town Sneads near the Georgia border is his “happy place."

The birth of his first daughter, along with the death of his father and his own extended hospital stay, Dupree says, convinced him to go straight and to serve as a better role model for his daughter than his family did for him.

Looking back, he wishes he had finished his degree. The education he never completed remains an unfinished chapter, yet the lessons he learned along the way became the foundation for the work he does today.

Aaron, 20, Santa Cruz, California

Finding a place to belong has been as important for Aaron as finding a career. Losing financial aid put college out of reach, but it didn’t end his ambitions. Now in barber school, he’s imagining a future with his own shop and perhaps a return to college to learn how to run it.

For Aaron, school was often a place where he struggled to feel he belonged. He had difficulty academically in Redwood City, California, and felt increasingly isolated after his family moved to Santa Cruz.

At Scotts Valley High School, he was one of relatively few students of color among largely affluent white classmates.

Aaron keeps a tight and busy schedule, working as a security guard and intake officer for a string of homeless shelters from 10 a.m. until 10 p.m., often staying up until 2 a.m. listening to music and playing video games.

In Santa Cruz, California, Aaron hangs out in his bedroom with his friends late one night after work.

Aaron raps in his room on the weekend. He has produced two albums of rap music with autobiographical lyrics that can be dark.

In his first year at Cabrillo Community College, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He started failing classes, struggling in particular with math, and lost his crucial financial aid. He stopped out after one year.

Aaron looks at a photo of himself as a kid with his dad, which is hanging on the wall in his bedroom. His bedroom posters reflect his musical tastes. He lives with roommates in the large house in Santa Cruz that his parents vacated when they could no longer afford it. Santa Cruz is one of the most expensive housing markets in the country.

Aaron is encouraged by the direction he’s taking. “I think it’s going pretty well,” he said. “And there’s a good career and a lot of good opportunities in it to support my life and also feed into my passions.”

Today, Aaron works overnight security at a bus yard and attends barber school. He sees barbering as a career that can support him financially while giving him room to pursue his passions. He hopes to open his own shop and is considering returning to college to study business and preparing for that step.

Sylvie, 43, Charlottesville, Virginia

Some college journeys are interrupted once. Sylvie’s has been interrupted again and again, each setback making a degree feel more distant. Still, she has never stopped learning, working, or searching for a way forward. Her story reveals how quickly personal crises can compound and how stubbornly hope can thrive alongside all of them.

Sylvie’s splintered path toward a college degree has taken her across the country and through profound loss, mental health struggles, addiction, and legal trouble. Yet she has continued to imagine a different future for herself and her son.

A self-described “artsy type”, Sylvie once imagined becoming a teacher or professor. But that path began to unravel after her parents divorced and the family moved from Arizona to Virginia during her teenage years. Struggling to adjust, she began drinking, smoking, and acting out before eventually transferring to an alternative high school with only a dozen students in her graduating class.

She finds comfort in the area’s vibrant arts and music scene and is rarely without a book.

Sylvie and her son now live in a basement apartment in her mother’s Charlottesville, Virginia, home.

The family frequently visits the creek to swim and explore nature together, finding moments of joy and connection.

Coming from a well-educated family, she still thinks about finishing her degree, though she questions whether returning to college would be worth the time and expense.

Today, Sylvie works part time as a welder after earning a certificate in the field. She is raising her son and continuing to work toward sobriety, a difficult and ongoing process

She has also endured another devastating loss: Her husband, the family’s primary breadwinner, recently died.

Sylvie’s extended family, including her ex-stepfather at left, gathers for an annual Passover Seder. Family relationships have shifted throughout Sylvie’s life, beginning with her parents’ divorce when she was young. Years later, while in college, she briefly married a punk musician who encouraged her to leave school.

Tyree, 20, Belle Glade, Florida

Tyree’s experience complicates familiar assumptions about why students leave college. Motivation was never an issue, but when wages, rent, transportation, and class schedules collided, education became the most flexible (and therefore expendable) part of his life. His story asks what determination can accomplish when the surrounding system leaves no margin for error.

Tyree had always enjoyed school. In high school, he was a top student in an International Baccalaureate program, excelling in science and gravitating toward history and government. College seemed like the clear next step. But the circumstances that would eventually interrupt his education began taking shape before he ever arrived on campus. The first disruption came during the COVID-19 pandemic. Like countless other students, Tyree struggled to stay engaged when his ninth-grade classes moved entirely online.

Tyree eventually returned to in-person school, and his grades improved. But during his senior year, a falling-out with his mother—they have since reconciled—meant Tyree had to find a place of his own. To pay the rent, he took a full-time job at a produce-packing facility. The hours made attending school during the day impossible, so he finished high school online at night.

Tyree is now interested in cybersecurity, a field that draws on the same curiosity and aptitude for problem-solving that once made him a standout student. He knows that completing his degree will be an important step toward that career, and he remains determined to find a way back to college.

Tyree spends time with his grandmother in her garden at her home in Belle Glade, Florida.

Tyree bumps fists with a friend who lives in his neighborhood in Belle Glade, Florida.

Tyree casts off the dock on Lake Okeechobee on Torry Island. Fishing is one of Tyree’s favorite afterschool activities and a way for him to wind down and decompress.

Tyree’s minnow net, which he uses to catch fish. The net sits on the drainage canal where he fishes.

Tyree fishes in a drainage canal off U.S. 80 in Belle Glade, Florida.

Alyssa, 28, Indianapolis

When the person who raised her needed care, Alyssa chose family over school. Years later, she is discovering that leaving college can be much easier than returning, even when the reasons are beyond a student’s control. Her persistence exposes a system with little room for grief, caregiving, or second chances when life intervenes.

After high school, Alyssa enrolled at Indiana University South Bend, commuting from Rochester, Indiana, where she lived with her aunt, uncle, and grandmother. A diligent student and three-sport athlete, she saw college as the natural next step.

Alyssa’s sister does her makeup in her bedroom at their mom’s house in Rochester, Indiana, while Alyssa is visiting.

When Alyssa gave birth to her daughter, she felt a renewed sense of purpose and a reason to imagine a different future.

A second child and a move to Indianapolis for her husband’s job followed Alyssa’s first daughter.

When her youngest turned 2, Alyssa decided it was time to return to college. “I just woke up one day and had this feeling of, ‘It’s time to stop bouncing around this idea of going to school.’”

She enrolled at Indiana University Kokomo, where she hopes to complete her degree within two years and begin a career as a radiology technician.

Alyssa and her sister share a moment talking about cheerleading and catching up in her sister’s bedroom in Rochester, Indiana, where her sister lives with their mom.

Alyssa is awaiting a decision on her renewed appeal for financial aid, hopeful that this time the university will recognize the circumstances that led her to leave college the first time. But whatever the outcome is, she is determined to keep going.

William, 36, Chicago

Will completed his core coursework, earned solid grades, and even walked at commencement. But a financial gap kept him from finishing the final credits he needed for his degree. More than a decade later, the professional boxer and youth mentor still hopes to graduate and show the young people he mentors the value of finishing what he started.

Will came remarkably close to earning his bachelor’s degree. He completed his core coursework at the University of Missouri, maintained a 3.2 GPA, and even walked at commencement. But more than a decade later, he remains fewer than 15 credits short of graduating.

A native of Chicago’s South Side, Will grew up in a family that placed great value on higher education.

His brother went to law school, and his mother works as a paralegal.

Will developed an early interest in law himself, but he also saw the financial realities that could make that path difficult.

Will is now a Chicago-based professional boxer and sports and entertainment programmer whose work blends athletics, music, and community-building.

He also uses boxing as a therapeutic and educational tool, helping young people learn to regulate their emotions. Someday, he hopes to formalize that work with a degree in psychology or a related field.

Will has built a life and career that draws on much of what he learned in college. He competes professionally as a boxer, incorporates live music into his ring walkouts, and mentors young people.

He hopes someday to open a gym of his own, a “safe haven” where others can find community and support. And he still wants to finish his degree. “Physically, it will provide me with that piece of paper that everybody is yearning for, right?” he says. “It provides you that moment of success.”

Sparking a Conversation

These seven stories represent the 43 million Americans who started college and never finished. They differ in age, geography, and circumstance but share an increasingly common experience: they began with hope and left without the degree they believed would change their lives.

National narratives often flatten or misrepresent this experience. This photojournalism project looks closer, following real journeys and opening honest dialogue about what it will take to help more people cross the finish line.