Where student debt hits hardest
Business Insider reports that “black students with a bachelors degree owe $7,400 more student debt on average than white graduates.” As time passes, the gaps widen. We can no doubt attribute the crevasse to systemic educational, housing and the inability to grow and distribute generational to barriers introduced and reinforced by segregation and the laws that made financial literacy and freedom an impossibility.
One in two black students default on loans, funding cuts and lack federal financial support for HBCUs saddle HBCU graduates with 32% more debt than peers at PWIs or other colleges. Black borrowers are repaying student loan debt at drastically lower rates in comparison to white borrowers with research finding that most black borrowers do not begin repaying even within the first two years post grad. This could also be attributed to the Market Watch study which found that black graduates make $3.34 less per hour than their white peers.
There is a small glimmer of hope as this presidential election season student loan debt forgiveness and relieve rests on platforms of presidential hopefuls like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris—whose platform angles student debt relief specifically at black entrepreneurs in a proposal to specifically narrow the racial wealth gap.
Student loan forgiveness is a blanket solution to a predatory financial problem which sets students up to essentially require student loans in order to pursue educational freedom, continuing the cycle of crippling financial flexibility which accompanies life-long student debt. While we don’t know what’s in store for the financial future of student loans what we do know is that access to higher education is largely a civil rights issue.
