Page 2 The Skanner Portland January 10, 2018
®
Challenging People to Shape
a Better Future Now
Bernie Foster
Founder/Publisher
Opinion
Black Students Hit Hard by For-Profit College Debt
Bobbie Dore Foster
Executive Editor
M
Jerry Foster
Advertising Manager
Christen McCurdy
News Editor
Patricia Irvin
Graphic Designer
Melanie Sevcenko
Reporter
Monica J. Foster
Seattle Office Coordinator
Susan Fried
Photographer
2017
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ounting student debt
is a nagging problem
for most families these
days. As the cost of
higher education rises, bor-
rowing to cover those costs of-
ten becomes a family concern
across multiple generations
including the student, par-
ents, and even grandparents
or other relatives.
Today’s 21st century jobs
usually demand higher edu-
cation and specialized skills
to earn one’s way into the
middle class. In households
where educational loans are
inevitable, it becomes an im-
portant family decision to
determine which institutions
are actually worth the debt in-
curred. Equally important is
the institution’s likelihood of
its students graduating.
Higher education institu-
tions that do not provide its
students and graduates with
requisite skills and knowl-
edge become money pits that
lead to deeper debt and likely
loan defaults.
New research by the Cen-
ter for Responsible Lending
(CRL) analyzed student debt
on a state-by-state basis. An
interactive map of CRL’s find-
ings reveal on a state basis
each of the 50 states’ total
undergraduate population,
for-profit enrollment, and the
top for-profit schools by en-
Charlene
Crowell
NNPA
Columnist
rollment for both four-year
and two-year institutions.
Entitled “The State of
For-Profit Colleges,” the re-
port concludes that investing
in a for-profit education is
almost always a risky prop-
osition. Undergraduate bor-
rowing by state showed that
“
students, making sacrifices
and struggling to manage
family and work obligations
to make better lives for their
families,” noted Robin How-
arth, a CRL senior research-
er. “For-profit colleges target
them with aggressive mar-
keting, persuading them to
invest heavily in futures that
will never come to pass.”
CRL also found that wom-
en and Blacks suffer dispa-
rate impacts, particularly at
for-profit institutions, where
they are disproportionately
enrolled in most states.
For example, enrollment at
The report concludes that invest-
ing in a for-profit education is
almost always a risky proposition
the percentage of students
that borrow from the federal
government generally ranged
between 40 to 60 percent for
public colleges, compared to
50 to 80 percent at for-profit
institutions.
Additionally, both public
and private, not-for-profit
institutions, on average, lead
to better results at a lower
cost of debt, better earnings
following graduation, and the
fewest loan defaults.
“In many cases, for-profit
students are nontraditional
Mississippi’s for-profit col-
leges was 78 percent female
and nearly 66 percent Black.
Other states with high Black
enrollment at for-profits in-
cluded Georgia (57 percent),
Louisiana (55 percent), Mary-
land (58 percent) and North
Carolina (54 percent).
Focus group interviews
further substantiated these
figures, and recounted poi-
gnant, real life experiences.
Brianna, a 31-year-old Black
female completed a Medical
Assistant (MA) certificate
at the now-defunct Everest
University. Once she com-
pleted her MA certificate and
passed the certification test,
she found she could only find
a job in her field of study that
paid $12 per hour, much less
than the $35,000-$45,000 sala-
ry that Everest told her would
be her starting salary as a
medical assistant.
She was also left with
$21,000 in student debt. As a
result, she has struggled since
matriculation with low credit
scores and cramped housing
conditions for herself and
three children.
The Midwestern states of
Indiana, Michigan and Wis-
consin have female-dominat-
ed for-profit enrollment and
disproportionate Black en-
rollment, too. These were also
states with some of the lowest
for-profit graduation rates
after six years of study. Medi-
an for-profit student debt in
many states is much higher
than for their public counter-
parts.
These disparate outcomes
are even more grievous when
one takes into account that
for-profit colleges are pri-
marily funded by taxpayers,
receiving up to 90 percent of
their revenues from feder-
al financial aid such as Pell
Grants, federal student loans
and veterans benefits.
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Updated daily.
Is Trump the Worst President on Minority Issues in 50 Years?
D
onald Trump, a man best
known as a “birther”
with a reality TV show
and a real estate empire,
who claimed that Mexico
was sending drugs and rap-
ists to the United States, was
sworn in as president on Jan-
uary 20, 2017. What happened
next was predictable and we
should expect more of the
same in 2018.
Here are seven decisions
from the past year confirm-
ing that Trump has been the
worst president for African
Americans, Hispanics and
other minorities over the last
50 years.
1. Trump picks Jeff Sessions
to succeed Loretta Lynch as
Attorney General of the U.S.
Trump went out of his way to
make sure that his adminis-
tration’s justice policy reflect-
ed 1940s America, when he
selected Jefferson Beauregard
Sessions III as his Attorney
General.
According to a Huffington
Post article published in Jan-
uary 2017, Sessions not only
supported gutting the Voting
Rights Act in 2013, he also has
“a record of blocking Black
judicial nominees.” Sessions,
“unsuccessfully prosecuted
Black civil rights activists for
voter fraud in 1985 ― includ-
ing a former aide to Martin
Luther King, Jr.”
Since, Sessions has taken
over at the Justice Depart-
Lauren
Victoria
Burke
NNPA
Columnist
ment, he has recused himself
from an investigation into
Russian involvement in the
2016 presidential election and
ordered a review of Obama
era police reforms.
“
of America’s 45th president
on the issue of race.
“I am not putting anybody
on a moral plane, what I’m
saying is this: you had a group
on one side and a group on the
other, and they came at each
other with clubs and it was
vicious and horrible and it
was a horrible thing to watch,
but there is another side,” said
Trump. “But you also had peo-
ple that were very fine people
on both sides.”
Trump also said, “I’ve con-
Trump says ‘there were very fine
people on both sides’ at the Char-
lottesville White nationalists rally
This is one time where the
selection of Rudy Giuliani for
attorney general may have ac-
tually looked like a more mod-
erate choice.
2. Trump says “there were
very fine people on both sides”
at the Charlottesville White
nationalists rally, during a
Trump Tower press confer-
ence. Never mind that one of
the largest gatherings of rac-
ists in America since the end
of the Civil Rights Movement
occurred only eight months
into Trump’s presidency. Put
that aside. Trump’s “both
sides” comments on who was
to blame for the public street
fight in the college town was
all anyone needed to under-
stand regarding the thinking
demned
many
different
groups, but not all of those
people were neo-Nazis, be-
lieve me. Not all of those peo-
ple were white supremacists
by any stretch. Those people
were also there, because they
wanted to protest the taking
down of a statue Robert E.
Lee.”
3. Trump calls for NFL own-
ers to fire players over silent
protests. Trump said NFL
owners should respond to the
players by saying, “Get that
son of a bitch off the field right
now, he’s fired. He’s fired!”
Just in case you missed it with
his comments on Charlottes-
ville, Trump was back again
to spoil the start of the NFL
season by commenting on
players who dared to silent-
ly protest racial injustice by
kneeling during the national
anthem. Trump called kneel-
ing during the anthem, “a to-
tal disrespect of our heritage,”
and a “total disrespect for ev-
erything we stand for.” The
result was more protests by
NFL players who then locked
arms on sidelines across the
U.S. with many White players
and coaches participating.
Even Rush Limbaugh found
himself having issues with
Trump on this one. “There’s a
part of this story that’s start-
ing to make me nervous, and
it’s this: I am very uncom-
fortable with the President of
the United States being able
to dictate the behavior and
power of anybody,” said Lim-
baugh. “That’s not where this
should be coming from.”
4. Trump uses an executive
order to block travel of refu-
gees from majority-Muslim
countries to the U.S. When
you have former staffers
for Jeff Sessions writing ex-
ecutive orders on immigra-
tion policy, you can expect
what happened at the Trump
White House on January
27, 2017. With absolutely no
warning, on the seventh day
of his presidency, Trump
signed an immigration and
travel executive order.
Read the rest of this commentary at
TheSkanner.com
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