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Black Virginia Graduate Students and their Federal Graduate Loan Debt

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Student loan debt is something that is near and dear to my heart. Everyday that I am in this Doctoral of Education program, I am reminded that I am truly only able to afford this program because of the tuition waivers provided to me by VCU due to my employment. For many others, including multiple students in my cohort, they are financing this program using federal loans. This has led me to researching Black graduate students in Virginia and their federal loan debt. 

Research Questions

  1. How many Black graduate students are in Virginia?
  2. What is the average federal debt per Black graduate student in Virginia?

Methods

Tableau provided the technology to visualize the data. I collected data from Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and Federal Student Aid, an Office of the U.S. Department of Education. From IPEDS, I collected data to understand enrollment, graduate programming options, tuition costs, and student demographics. From Federal Student Aid, I gathered data regarding federal student loans – their disbursement, number of recipients, and institutional types. The data are visualized using bar graphs, scorecards, tree maps, geo maps and a Tableau dashboard.

Discussion

How many Black graduate students are there?

There are currently 3,080,176 enrolled Black graduate students in the United States. 59% of all graduate students in America identify as women. Black women and men make up 7% and 3% respectively, of the total enrolled graduate student population. In Virginia, there are 100,483 total graduate students; which is 3% of the total graduate student population. 41% of all graduate students in Virginia identify as men. Black men and women make up 5% and 11% respectively, of the enrolled graduate student population in Virginia. 

Black Students w: Grad Stoles
Where are all the Black graduate students in Virginia?

There are 16,295 Black Students in Virginia. These students are enrolled in 57 different higher education institutions in Virginia. Liberty University (n=6,718), Regent University (n=2,015), George Mason University (GMU, n=1,069), Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU, n=767), and Old Dominion University (ODU, n=716) enroll the most Black graduate students. These institutions account for 69% (n=11,285) percent of all enrolled Black graduate students in Virginia. In fact, Liberty University enrolls more Black graduate students than the other 52 Virginia Institutions combined. Of the 57 institutions that had graduate level programs, three institutions did not have any students who identified as Black: IGlobal University, Sweet Briar College, and Virginia University of Integrative Medicine.

Federal Loans and Black Graduate Students

For the 2019-2020 academic year, unsubsidized graduate student loans account for $20.1 billion dollars of federal aid for Black graduate students in America; this is 72.5% of the federal aid disbursed for this student group. Graduate PLUS loans round out remaining federal funds disbursed. The federal government classifies institutions as either: private-nonprofit, public, proprietary, foreign-for-profit, foreign-private, or foreign-public when disbursing aid. Private-nonprofit institutions accounted for 53% of all institutions to use federal aid disbursed to Black graduate students. Unsubsidized graduate loans account for the majority of the federal funding received at private-nonprofit, public, and proprietary institutions.

In the 2019-2020 academic year, $27.8 billion dollars was disbursed to Black graduate students in the U.S. Of this, around $972 million dollars was disbursed to Black graduate students enrolled in Virginia higher education institutions. Virginia ranks 9th in the nation regarding the amount of federal aid disbursed to Black graduate students.

Regarding the $972 million dollars of aid disbursed to Black graduate students in Virginia, Liberty University (n=$276M), Virginia Commonwealth University (n=$107M), Regent University (n=$64M), George Mason University (n=$53M), and Old Dominion University (n=$21M) account for 53.6% of the federal aid. On average, this means that $59,631 was disbursed per student in 2019-2020.

$59,631 is the average but by no means does that mean that most students have this amount of debt for one year of graduate school. Included in that number is all masters degrees, doctorates, and first professional degrees. Unfortunately, the way that the data is presented, I was not able to distinguish between degree levels. In addition, the tuition for private-nonprofit, public, and proprietary institutions are staggeringly different. Looking at the five Virginia institutions that have been discussed thus far, average in-state tuition and fees rates range from $8,400 (Liberty University) to $16,952 (Regent University) with out-of-state tuition and fees ranging from $8,400 (Liberty University) to $36,960 (GMU). 

 

Conclusion

At the start of this report, I set out to find the answers to the following questions:

  1. How many Black graduate students are in Virginia?
  2. What is the average federal debt per Black graduate student in Virginia?

And I now know the answers to these questions:

  1. There are 16,295 Black graduate students in Virginia.
  2. The average federal debt per Black graduate student in Virginia is $59,631.

To further my knowledge about this topic, in the future it would be important to know the following additional information:

  1. How many graduate programs are there in Virginia?
  2. What is the average tuition breakdown per graduate degree-level (masters, doctorate, professional)?
    • How does this differ between private-nonprofit, public, and proprietary institutions?
    • How does this differ between secular and non-secular institutions? 
  3. What is the average number of credits per degree program?

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References

Federal Student Aid. (2020). Title IV Program Volume Reports. Federal Student Aid. https://studentaid.gov/data-center/student/title-iv.

National Center for Education Statistics. (2019). Average costs (in constant 2019 dollars) associated with attendance for full-time, first-time degree/certificate-seeking undergraduates at Title IV institutions operating on an academic year calendar system, and percentage change, by level of institution, type of cost, control of institution, residency, and student housing: United States, academic years 2017–18 and 2019–20. The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/Search/ViewTable?tableId=27425.