WASHINGTON- There is a debt crisis among African-American students on college and university campuses.
According to the college access nonprofit organization The Education Trust, Black borrowers have a 50-50 chance of defaulting on a federal loan within 12 years of entering college. Black borrowers are also over 150 percent more likely to default on a federal loan than their White peers.
Additionally, Black students who have completed a bachelor’s degree are 21 percent more likely to default on federal loans compared to 18 percent of White college dropouts.
Not only are Black students facing higher rates of debt, they are less likely to finish their college degrees.
“A college degree remains the surest path to the middle class and yet, a tragic marker of our continuing racial and economic injustice in our society is that the likelihood of African-American adults holding a college degree is less than it was for White adults in 1990,” said Dr. John B. King Jr., president and chief executive officer of The Education Trust and former U.S. Secretary of Education during the Obama administration.
Only four out of 10 Black and Native Americans who start their degrees will finish it, he added.
At the Black Student Debt Hill Briefing: Explaining the Crisis and Providing Solutions at the Liaison Hotel in Washington D.C. on Thursday, The Education Trust addressed the racial inequity among loan repayment and degree attainment as well as offered potential solutions to a vexing problem.
