DEBT & DEFAULT AMONG BLACK COLLEGE STUDENTS
IS AT CRISIS LEVELS. UNDERSTAND AND ADDRESS THE
UNIQUE CHALLENGES FACED BY STUDENTS OF COLOR
Debt and default among Black college students is at crisis levels, and even a bachelor’s degree is no guarantee of security: Black BA graduates default at five times the rate of White BA graduates (21 versus 4 percent), and are more likely to default than white dropouts.
- Brookings Institution
According to the American Council on Education, "In 2016, Black students accounted for a larger share of secondary school completers, undergraduate and graduate students, and graduate completers than was the case 20 years prior. Yet these encouraging gains are too often overshadowed by outcomes that reflect the effects of systemic and structural barriers that can limit or eliminate opportunity for Black students, families, and communities, as well as for our nation at large." Read the entire report here. Other highlights of the report:
Evidence:
Judith Scott-Clayton. "The Looming Student Loan Default Crisis is Worse Than We Thought." Brookings Institution. Evidence Speaks Reports, Vol 2, #34.
10 Jan 2018. Read entire report here.
Lorelle L. Espinosa, Jonathan M. Turk, Morgan Taylor, and Hollie M. Chessman. "Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education: A Status Report." American
Council on Education. 2019
Black students enrolled in bachelor’s degree programs exhibited lower rates of first-year persistence and higher rates of dropping out than any other racial or ethnic group. Moreover, the gender gap in enrollment for Black students remained the widest of any group. In 2016, 62.2 percent of Black undergraduates and 70.2 percent of Black graduate students were women.
Black undergraduates were more likely than others to receive federal grants and loans, but graduated with the greatest student loan debt of any group. The 86.4 percent of Black 2016 bachelor’s degree recipients who borrowed owed an average of $34,010 by graduation, compared with $29,669 for all bachelor’s degree recipients. The 67.2 percent of Black associate degree recipients who borrowed owed an average of $22,303, compared with $18,501 for students overall.
Patterns of borrowing among African American graduate students are deeply concerning, especially among those at the nation’s for-profit colleges, which enrolled approximately 50 percent of Black doctoral students in 2016. The vast majority (95.2 percent) of Black doctoral recipients who attended these schools borrowed an average amount of $128,359 for graduate study.
Even with a bachelor’s degree in hand, African Americans ages 25 to 34 earned 15 percent less and had an unemployment rate two-thirds higher than the typical bachelor’s degree holder of similar age.
In every income quartile, Black undergraduates were less likely than members of any other racial or ethnic group to attend a very selective institution, and Black undergraduates were among the least likely to enroll in and complete an associate degree or bachelor’s degree in the lucrative STEM fields, at any institution.
In 2016, people of color held only 21.1 percent of full-time faculty positions, and faculty of color were less likely than White faculty to hold full professorships.
Although the non-White share of college and university presidents more than doubled between 1986 and 2016, people of color still held only 16.8 percent of all presidencies in 2016. Women of color held only 5.1 percent of all presidencies.
Students were more likely to encounter people of color in service roles than in faculty or leadership positions. While people of color represented less than one-fifth of senior executives, 42.2 percent of service and maintenance staff and one-third of campus safety personnel were people of color.