Latinx students have a greater aversion to taking on student loan debt than their White peers, according to a new study by the civil rights group UnidosUS in partnership with the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Law and the UNC Center for Community Capital.
The report, “Debt, Doubt, and Dreams: Understanding the Latino Completion Gap,” explores how different barriers impact completion rates for Latinx students, with an emphasis on student attitudes toward debt.
While Latinx students are going to college at “historic rates,” their graduation rates lag, said co-author Kate Sablosky Elengold, an assistant professor of law at UNC. About 43 percent of Latinx students earn a degree within six years of enrollment compared to 68 percent of White students, according to a 2017 Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce study.
That’s “quite a big differential between Whites and Latinos in terms of completion,” Sablosky Elengold said. “We started with the question, what is the cause of that?”
The report’s authors decided to test a narrative, backed up by research, that Latinx communities are more debt averse than their White counterparts. They wanted to know if this applied to student loan debt, as well, and if so, what that might mean for fostering Latinx student success in the future.
The study surveyed 1,500 students, ages 18 to 40, and 35% were Latinx. The study found that, even though these students were borrowing less to pay for college, they reported feeling more stressed about debt than their White counterparts.
Researchers stressed that it’s an understandable reaction On applications for federal financial aid, almost half of Latinx students have an expected family contribution (EFC) of zero, and 70% are first-generation students.
