- About 26 million people had already applied for relief, hoping to end years of student loan repayments.
- Such debt disproportionately affects people of color, who don’t have the levels of generational wealth of many of their white counterparts.
- Black college grads exit college with $25,000 more debt on average than white students, and four years later nearly half of Black people owe 12.5% more than they initially borrowed.
As she applied to colleges in the late 1980s, life looked rosy for Sandra Garcia, who was in the top 10% of her high school class.
But after her father became disabled following an accident at his construction job, Garcia, the oldest of her family’s eight kids in Fort Worth, Texas, found herself working three jobs to help support the family while attending college part-time in fits and starts. She took 12 years to earn her business degree, then four more to get her master’s, both from Texas Wesleyan University – the first in her family to accomplish both.
Marc Ramirez | USA TODAY