Why Do Blacks Have Such Bad Student Loan Default Rates?
01/14/2018
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From the Brookings Institution:

The looming student loan default crisis is worse than we thought

Judith Scott-Clayton Thursday, January 11, 2018

… The new data underscore that default rates depend more on student and institutional factors than on average levels of debt. For example, only 4 percent of white graduates who never attended a for-profit defaulted within 12 years of entry, compared to 67 percent of black dropouts who ever attended a for-profit. And while average debt per student has risen over time, defaults are highest among those who borrow relatively small amounts.

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.

The overall student loan default rate among Asians since 2004 is 6.2%, among whites 12.4%, among Hispanics 20.0%, and among blacks 37.5%. This rank order is different from mortgage defaults from 2007 onward in which Hispanics have the worst rate, perhaps because blacks tend to be more ambitious about getting educational credentials than Hispanics.

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