Not a native speaker here, I would have thought you "drop out" of college not "stop out" of it, is both sounding ok to native speakers or are they different things?
you're correct that the term normally used is "drop out". i think this article may be using "stop out" to specifically refer to people who merely did not enroll in a new semester (vs. people who e.g. failed out, or were otherwise forcibly removed from the school), but i wasn't able to conclude this 100% from my reading
“Survey of men and women who stopped out of community college in the past year shows similar economic motivations across genders, though women were more likely to say that they were having a medical issue or that they had to care for a child, while men were more likely to say that they had a job opportunity or needed to financially support a cohabitating adult.”
