Student loan debt is swelling for graduates across the country.
But according to a new report, the crisis is hitting students of color the hardest – and widening the racial wealth gap in the process.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) released a report titled “Quicksand: Borrowers Of Color & The Student Debt Crisis” during the NAACP national convention in Detroit this week.
The report is “trying to make the argument that higher education is a public good,” said Julia Barnard, one of the co-authors and a researcher at the Center for Responsible Lending. “College should not be a luxury. Everyone should have a chance to pursue it, and the way it’s going now, not everyone can.”
Other studies have documented the extent to which large proportions of minority students borrow and fall into debt. The NAACP report says that about 85 percent of African-American graduates – and nearly 90 percent of native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders – had to take out loans to pay for college in 2016. That’s 15 to 20 percent more than White students.
“Those numbers are very high,” Barnard said. “That indicates this crisis is hurting certain populations more than others, and it’s happening to many, many people. The alarm bells are ringing.”
The report abounds with alarm bells.
