College Was Supposed to Close the Wealth Gap for Black Americans. The Opposite Happened.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/college-was-supposed-to-close-the-wealth-gap-for-black-americans-the-opposite-happened-11628328602

On the whole, Black Americans have more debt, lower incomes, and less family/network support.

 

Not surprising. For-profit colleges are mostly to be blamed, in my opinion. They are typically over-priced and tend to target minorities.

 

I just want to make it clear that Dustin did nothing wrong at all by posting that information so the tone of concern I'm about to express is not directed toward him.

It really bothers me how often the media posts negatives about black people and it's been going on for so long and through so many different outlets I can't even remember when or where it started. I fail to believe there isn't purposeful intent behind all of it. Despite that, it's certainly not all bad: 61.2% of Black people are now in the middle class (Brookings), some have it slightly higher. 2.5 million American Black men are now millionaires (Institute of Family Studies), and incarceration rates have dropped by over 33% since 2006 (Pew Research).

Those facts fly in the face of what people who use those stories against Black people often claim, that they've just given up. No way. If anything, looking at those stats and then considering the WSJ story, my takeaway is that they're actually trying very hard and managing to make progress in spite of the challenges they've been facing.

 

Let's just blame the entire education system since 69% of 2019 graduates (regardless of race) had student debt averaging $37,200.

 

Ouch :-(

 

There's a difference between wealth and income. While Black people haven't built much wealth, college-educated Black people earn substantially more than Black people without degrees. Wealth is not being built because of low marriage rates, higher than average student loan debt, and lack of education in financial planning.

For-profit colleges do play an outsized role in the debt issue. More than twice as many Black students attend for-profits than HBCUs, and, on average, for-profit colleges have lower graduation rates than HBCUs. HBCUs have their problems, but only about 10% of Black students attend HBCUs. Yet, HBCUs produce more Black college graduates than for-profits.

"The six-year graduation rate for Black students entering higher education in fall 2012 was 42.9% at public four-year universities and 45.5% at private non-profit four-year universities. It was only 14.2% at for-profit four-year institutions."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2021/03/08/a-new-report-reveals-the-false-promises-of-for-profit-colleges/?sh=4830587635fc

 

That's lower than the national average for all races and the average student loan debt for Black students who attend any college.