Even those that manage to make it to college, often drop out because the financial burden is just too much.

The most recent college graduation rate for black students is 20.5%, about half of the total US graduation rate of 39%.

It’s not that they lack drive or ambition. It’s that they often can’t afford to stay in school.

According to the Center for American Progress, “69% of black students who don’t finish school cite the burden of high student loan debt as the reason, compared with 43% of their white peers.”

Half of black college graduates leave school with more than $25,000 in student loan debt

Today, more Latinos are attending college than ever before.

During the 2012 academic year, there were 2.4 million Latinos enrolled in college, comprising 19% of the total college-going population.

Despite this surge in college enrollment, only 9% of the total Latino population between the ages of 25 and 29 holds a bachelor’s degree.

This paints a bleak picture for Latinos as they strive for the American Dream, as enrolling in college without attaining a degree will not necessarily facilitate upward socioeconomic mobility.

Further, Latino college students are also grappling with this generation’s greatest financial burden—student loan debt.


Although borrowing is on the rise for all undergraduates, Latinos are accumulating some of the highest student debt totals. In 2012, 67% of Latino college graduates completed their degrees with some form of student loan debt. On average, Latino undergraduates acquire $49,700 in debt, which is slightly less than their white counterparts ($54,000) but above all other minority groups.

The majority of this debt is nonfederal, which carries a variable, and likely much higher, interest rate than federal loans. These loans also tend to have a longer repayment period than federally backed loans. Essentially, Latinos are taking out riskier loans at a higher interest rate than their counterparts, creating scenarios where they will be paying back more money over a longer period of time.

This leads to adverse effects on young Latinos’ ability to achieve the symbols of the American dream, such as purchasing a home, starting a family, or opening a small business. Policymakers, university administrators, and advocates all have a role to play in ensuring that Latinos graduate from college with as little debt as possible.

A 1 percent tax on concentrated wealth would erase student debt over a decade and bring the cost of public higher education to zero.

By Sarah Anderson, Marc Bayard, John Cavanagh, Chuck Collins, Josh Hoxie and Sam Pizzigati

February 18, 2016

These authors explain how Bernie Sanders’ goal of free public college can be implemented:

Higher education has become a debt sentence for millions of Americans, limiting economic mobility and contributing to our growing economic divide. Student debt now tops $1.3 trillion, and the burden weighs heaviest on black and Latino students. Young, low-income African-American families are twice as likely to have student debt as their white counterparts.

Our current debt explosion has coincided with the increasing concentration of wealth in America. The super-rich are shielding their financial fortunes from taxation, an unfair dynamic that leaves public revenues depleted.…..

Tuition-free public higher education, funded by a tax on concentrated wealth, could end the college debt spiral. The cost of making public colleges tuition-free would be significant—about $76 billion per year. But the potential revenue from even just a modest wealth tax would also be significant.

Taxing the wealth of our richest 1 percent at a mere 1 percent would raise some $260 billion annually—enough to cover the cost of tuition for any student interested in attending a public college or university and eliminate all existing student debt over a 10-year period.

This is one step toward addressing the ever-widening wealth gap in the U.S.