There are two situations when you don't graduate from college. One is that it has completed all the courses, but failed all the professional exams and failed the make-up exams. This situation is called graduation. The other is that you didn't complete all the courses and your studies were interrupted. This situation is called "dropping out of school". Both college graduates and college dropouts belong to college degrees in the classification of academic qualifications. However, due to the unsatisfactory academic completion of graduates and dropouts, they are generally not treated as equivalent academic qualifications. Graduates are treated as the next level, and dropping out of school is treated as the upper level education. For example, college graduation is regarded as high school education, undergraduate graduation as college education, and college graduation and undergraduate graduation as high school education.

Academic qualifications refer to people's learning experience of receiving scientific and cultural education and skills training in educational institutions. According to the education law and other laws and regulations and the relevant provisions of the state, academic education includes the following forms: primary school, junior high school, senior high school, junior college education, undergraduate education, graduate education and so on.