Analysis of federal data shows that African Americans continue to struggle more than other borrowers with repaying student loans — despite heavy use of income-driven repayment programs.
A set of federal programs created more than a decade ago to help struggling student loan borrowers appears not to have made a significant dent in the default rates of one particularly vulnerable group: black borrowers.
An analysis of federal data released by the Center for American Progress Monday shows that African Americans who entered college in 2011 and took out federal student loans defaulted on those loans at sharply higher rates than did their peers of other races.
The think tank’s report is a follow-up to 2017 data revealing that nearly half of all black borrowers who entered college in 2003-04 had defaulted on at least one loan within 12 years of initial enrollment. Those data — which were the first time federal data had been broken down by race — surprised many higher education officials and policy makers.