The Hill News

Our country is facing a perfect storm of rising college costs, student debt and growing inequality.  While the costs will be significant for an entire generation of students, they will be particularly high for Black and Hispanic graduates struggling to create a more prosperous future.

Here’s why:

The odds of paying off college debt are much tougher for minority graduates, particularly Black men, who face far higher unemployment than their White counterparts. More than 25 percent of Black men younger than 24 with college degrees were unemployed last year, about the same rate as young Black men who were college dropouts.  

Before the recession Black male high school graduates were more likely to be employed than current Black male college grads, according to Andrew Sum, director of the center for labor market studies at Northeastern University.

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