Photo: The Boston Globe

Most students at closed colleges give up on their education altogether. Fewer than half transfer to other institutions. Many of those will not stay long enough to earn degrees. Others lose credits when they move from one school to another and have to spend longer in college, often taking out more loans to pay for it.

The rest join the growing number of Americans—now more than 40 million—who spend time and money to go to college but never finish. And that’s happening at a time when efforts to increase the proportion of the population with degrees are already facing headwinds.

Illustration: Thomas Fuchs

High school seniors are more likely to attend college if they complete the federal financial aid form known as the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

But the state that was the first to require students to fill out the FAFSA to graduate, Louisiana, is reversing course and dropping the mandate after state officials deemed it too intrusive. For now, Louisiana appears to be an outlier.

Sam Prater knows what it feels like to be homeless. After dropping out of high school, he was evicted twice in his hometown of Detroit. So when he saw homeless students being offered just 14 days in college dorms in California, he knew he had to try something different.

Prater’s organization now has four homes in Los Angeles that offer wraparound services to help young people who experience homelessness jump-start their lives and their college education.