Debt, For-Profit Schools, and Black Students

Is it impossible anymore for people to look logically and objectively at issues, rather than ideologically?

For-profit colleges take the blame for a lot of bad trends in our higher-education system. Sometimes it’s deserved. But too frequently the blame is driven by ideology and not objective analysis. And lest we assume that the blue-chip think tanks, the ones full of top-notch academics, are above this for-profit college-bashing, that is not what was on display last week at the Brookings Institution.

At an event titled “Student Loans: A Look at the Evidence,” one panelist blamed high debt burdens among black students on — you guessed it — for-profit colleges. This is not the first time we’ve seen this argument. The same claim appeared as the title of a Hechinger Institute article earlier this year. The reasoning behind the claim is that black students are more likely to attend for-profit colleges than their peers (true), and student debt is higher at for-profits than at other colleges (often true).

The problem with this argument is that it is based on reasoning alone. It tells us nothing of the magnitude of the effect of for-profit colleges on debt burdens among black students. What is needed for that task are data. And in this case the data do not show that for-profit college enrollment is a meaningful factor in explaining relatively high debt among black students.

I wonder what does.

In short, the claim that for-profit colleges are a noteworthy factor for explaining high debt among black students doesn’t stand up even to simple scrutiny. There is a pattern here.

None of this is to say that the relatively high debt burdens among black students is not a serious problem. On the contrary. The issue demands serious solutions. Blaming for-profit colleges is not one of them.

Read the whole thing.