Examining Long-Term Student Loan Default Rates by Race and Ethnicity

Since the release of long-term student loan default data in the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study last fall, one finding that has gotten a great deal of attention is the large gap in default rates by race and ethnicity. Judith Scott-Clayton of Teachers College, Ben Miller of the Center for American Progress, and I all highlighted the high percentage of African-American students who began college in the 2003-04 academic year and defaulted on their loans by 2015. As the chart below shows, black students were more than twice as likely to default on their loans than white students (49% versus 20%), with some differences by institutional type.

But since some of the difference in default rates could be due to other factors (such as family resources and the type of college attended), I ran logistic regressions using the handy regression tools in PowerStats. The first regression just controls for race/ethnicity, while the second regression adds in other control variables of interest. The results are presented as odds ratios, meaning that coefficients larger than 1 reflect a higher likelihood of default and coefficients smaller than 1 reflect a lower likelihood. (Here’s a good primer on interpreting odds ratios.)

In the first regression, the odds ratios for black (3.69), Hispanic (2.09), multiracial (2.56), and American Indian/Alaska Native students (2.45) were all significantly higher than white students at p<.05, while Asian students (0.48) had significantly lower default rates.

After adding in control variables, the coefficients for underrepresented minority students were somewhat smaller. But for African-American (2.56) and multiracial (2.45) students, they were still significantly higher than for white students after adding other controls. This means that black students were about 150% more likely to default than white students—an enormous gap after taking a number of other important factors into account. The coefficients for Hispanic and American Indian students were no longer significant, and Asian students were still less likely to default than white students (an odds ratio of 0.42).

Additionally, the regression also shows the importance of parental education, family income, and sector of attendance in predicting the likelihood of long-term default. Notably, students who began at a for-profit college were about 120% more likely to default on their loans than community college students, while four-year students were less likely. Men were 36% more likely to default on their loans than women, an interesting finding given men typically earn more money than women.

Much more needs to be done to dig deeper into factors associated with long-term student loan default rates. But at this point, it appears clear that other demographic and institutional characteristics available in the BPS do relatively little to explain the large gaps in default rates between black and white students. It would be helpful to have measures of family wealth available given large black-white differences in wealth to see how much of the variation in default rates is due to family resources.

Author: Robert

I am an a professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville who studies higher education finance, accountability policies and practices, and student financial aid. All opinions expressed here are my own. View all posts by Robert