“Not only are students of color more likely to borrow more for a degree, and borrow in higher amounts for the same degree, but they’re more likely to struggle to repay student loans than white students."
"The justification for student debt as the primary way we pay for college has been in part based on the assumption that we’ll have consumer protections in place, and we’ll try to make it as painless as possible for people."
The dramatic rise in student loan debt has placed unacceptable risk on working-class families and on people of color, who must take on more debt for the same degree as white students.
"The potential of this plan is that it increases public investment back to levels we saw when college was much more affordable, and it pegs it to a price for students."
“To the extent we have had baby boomers running for president for the past few decades, they got an education in a world when you did not have to take on debt."
“There are massive benefits to institutions, to students themselves in the long term in being more diverse and having a set of students from different backgrounds.”
Today, Demos proposed establishing a public credit registry, housed in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as an essential part of a larger effort to reshape rules around debt and lending in order to reduce racial wealth inequality.
The marquee bill, which features improvements to voting, campaign finance, and ethics laws, addresses the deep political, racial, and economic inequalities that plague our democracy.
A system of Fair Elections for New York State will not only allow for candidates from diverse communities to compete, but it will help build lasting political power for communities of color.
Loans may be one solution for helping students afford college and increase achievement, but grants that don't have to be repaid is another. The researchers are working on a new study that examines the academic effects of federal loans versus grant aid and agree that the effects of the federal Pell Grant may be stronger on academic performance, Marx said.
If the goal is to resegregate higher education, the efforts have largely worked. Amid budget cuts and attacks on affirmative action, elite public colleges are enrolling fewer black students than they were a generation ago.
New York City’s system has enabled candidates ― especially those from less affluent neighborhoods ― to more consistently rely on small donors in their districts.
The poll results indicate that politics may soon catch up to the reality borrowers are facing, said Mark Huelsman, the associate director of policy and research at Demos, a left-leaning think tank.
“It’s a sign of the increasing anxiety that voters and families are feeling about their own debt or their children going into to debt or them going into debt for their children,” he said.
As Mark Huelsman, a policy analyst at Demos, an advocacy group tweeted: "the average family inheritance to a white college grad can pay off the average undergrad debt balance and have enough left over for a 20 percent down [payment] on a $575,000 home." That’s assuming the inheritor has student debt to begin with.