A new study by LendEDU examines the student debt crisis and offers data on paying for college by different racial and ethnic groups. The study notes that 60 percent of all students leave college with some amount of debt. There are 45 million Americans who now have some student loan debt with an overall whopping total of $1.52 trillion.
Using data from a survey of a very large group of college students, LendEDU found that 29 percent of all college students said they were responsible for paying all of their college costs. Nearly 40 percent said they had to pay at least some of the cost of attending college. Less than one third of all college students said they did not contribute to sharing the cost of their college education.
In what may come as a surprise to many readers, when the data was broken down by race, there are only small differences between Blacks and Whites. Some 32 percent of Black students stated that they had to shoulder all costs of their education. This was only slightly higher than the rate for Whites. A total of 42 percent of African American college students said they were responsible for paying some of their college fees, compared to 39 percent of Whites. Only 26 percent of Blacks did not share in paying for their college education. Some 31 percent of White students did not help pay for college.
