Below you will find the top 65 online universities in America sorted by retention rate of full time students. More specifically the statistics below represent the percentage of first-time students, seeking a bachelor's degree who returned to the college to continue their students for their second year.

Why we like retention rates?
Retention rate signals toward student satisfaction with their college. Students tend to stay enrolled when they enjoy their professors, studies, and study environments. They may be more likely to feel their tuition dollars are being well spent. It is likely in our opinion that many colleges with open admission policies are going to suffer from lower retention rates since they admit students from a wider range of motivation levels.

Please see additional notes below the rankings.

Additional notes about the retention rates found above:

For colleges with multiple campuses, we tried to look at the retention rates for several of their campuses and choose a retention rate from a campus that represented the college system. This is not a perfect system and retention rates can vary significantly from campus to campus. Before choosing a specific college, we recommend for you to look them up at the U.S. Department of Education IES National Center for Education Statistics website.

Specifically, the retention rates are the percentage of students who began in fall 2008 and returned in fall 2009.