Black Americans who didn’t finish college are just as likely to have student debt as a white borrower with an advanced degree

US Census Bureau researchers found student debt is tied to any attempt at education, regardless of having a degree, and racial differences are stark.

Black borrowers with no degrees were just as likely as white borrowers with advanced degrees to have student debt. Photo: Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

By Ayelet Sheffey and Andy Kiersz

Even if they didn’t finish college, Black student-loan borrowers carry the same debt burden as a white adults with an advanced degree.

That’s what two statisticians found after analyzing US Census data on the burden of student loan debt before the pandemic. They also learned that women — Black women in particular — are more likely to carry debt than men, and that people with student loan debt were more likely to also have credit card or medical debt.

On Wednesday, Michael D. King and Lindsay M. Monte, census survey statisticians, and Neil Bennett, a census economist, released a report detailing the added economic hardship COVID-19 brought to those with student debt. Using data from the census’ 2017 Survey of Income and Program Participation, which provides information about debt holders in the years preceding the pandemic, it found that “Black adults were more likely than White adults at every educational attainment level to have student loans.”