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Why Doesn’t College Work for Blacks?
The headline was numbingly familiar: “For Blacks, College is Not An Equalizer.” The op-ed in the Washington Post by Ray Boshara explored what he called a “troubling paradox,” namely that so many well-educated black Americans “feel so economically insecure.”
It’s a startling fact, Boshara continued, “that blacks with college degrees have lost wealth over the past generation.” White college graduates “saw their wealth soar by 86 percent” between 1992 and 2013, while black college graduates experienced a loss of 55 percent over the same period.
I made a little bet with myself as I read the piece: “Two-to-one he doesn’t talk about family structure.” Boshara is the Director of St. Louis Federal Reserve’s Center for Household Financial Stability and a senior fellow at the Aspen Institute. His piece is carefully argued and well researched. He makes some valid points, such as that black and white college graduates “share and receive wealth very differently.” Whereas white college graduates are likely to receive financial assistance from their parents, black college grads are more often the donors of funds — to struggling family members including parents — than the recipients of help themselves.
Boshara then lists some proposals for fixing the problem, like “lending circles” and “matched savings programs” to make college more affordable for black students, along with the usual calls to combat racial discrimination.
As I feared though, he avoided what I consider to be a key factor in the black/white difference. The great divide in wealth accumulation in America is founded on marriage. Married couples accumulate much more wealth than divorced or never married people do. A study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the median married couple in their sixties had ten times more wealth than a typical single person.
An Ohio State study found that divorce decreases wealth by an average of 77 percent. Jay Zagorsky, the study’s author, counseled: “If you really want to increase your wealth, get married and stay married. On the other hand, divorce can devastate your wealth.”
Now consider the demographics of black college graduates. The overwhelming majority are women. Females now account for 66 percent of all bachelor’s degrees earned by blacks, 70 percent of master’s degrees, and 60 percent of doctorates. Women tend to desire husbands who are as educated or more educated than they are, which makes marriage more difficult for black women with higher education degrees. According to an analysis by the Brookings Institution, the percentage of black women college graduates aged 25 to 35 who have never married is 60 percent, compared to 38 percent for white college-educated women.
Further, only 2 percent of highly-educated white women had children out of wedlock, whereas 26 percent of black women with four-year degrees did.
Unsurprisingly, more black than white women marry men who have less education. The Brookings study found that only 49 percent of black, college-educated women marry men with at least some post-secondary education, compared with 84 percent of white, college-educated women. Since education is so closely tied to income, a household with two college graduates is overwhelmingly likely to make more income than a household with only one college graduate. More white and Asian couples fit this pattern. They pool more resources and hold onto their nest egg into retirement. Oh, and black couples are more likely to divorce than others.
There are many additional reasons that stable married couples accumulate wealth. Family members are more likely to loan and donate money to a son-in-law, say, than to a live-in boyfriend. Husbands and wives complement one another in wealth strategies (men tend to be risk-takers, women tend to be cautious). Married couples are healthier and miss fewer days of work. Married men seem to be more motivated to get jobs and promotions than singles. These are just some of the dozens of factors.
The bruising reality for all Americans – though, like most things, it is more stark among African Americans – is that men are falling behind. The retreat from stable families that began in the 1960s and really hit the skids in the 1980s, has now yielded adults who’ve been damaged (though not all obviously). As David Autor and Melanie Wasserman postulate, growing up in a mother only home seems to hit boys harder than girls. Thus, there are fewer “marriageable” men for those women to marry, and the cycle becomes self-reinforcing.
There’s nothing wrong in principle with efforts to make college more affordable and to focus on racial discrimination, but the real source of the black/white wealth disparity probably owes more to the marriage gap than to those things. The Aspen Institute should focus on that.
Published in General
Why doesn’t it work for blacks? For the same reason it doesn’t work for most college graduates. College has been reduced to a nothing. In order to succeed, you can’t have just gone to college. Employers know that is a meaningless piece of paper. You have to have studied something worthwhile, or gone to a very reputable school. Having a history, psychology, or other “soft” degree from a low level school is less impressive than a high school diploma was 100 years ago.
You can fool the students into thinking they have something of value, but you can’t fool the employers.
Going to college ≠ well educated.
There should be a class action lawsuit vs every Africana/Urban Studies Dept. for these suckers.
College works just fine… life choices are the things that bite back. Just for even addressing this subject you will be accused of ‘white privilege’ and everyone then goes back to social justice norming, just make the college education of blacks free and we feel good about our ‘social justice’ efforts.
It must be a terrible uphill battle being young and any minority; trying to get ahead then being accused of being an ‘Oreo’ or uppity or even just being conservative and having any values, what a disgrace to your own ‘kind’.
Look how Mia Love, Nicky Haley, Omarosa Manigault or Condolezza Rice are treated by the liberals. Instead of being held up as lights of accomplishment they are derided for being ‘sell outs’. If this doesn’t change then this is a hopeless fight… liberals seem to be on a race to the bottom.
Another factor is affirmative action. By bringing many blacks to schools where the learning environment is pitched at a level higher than what they are prepared for, they have been set up to fail. Even if they graduate, they are poorly educated compared to their classmates.
An undergraduate researcher at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has gained national acclaim for her research showing, she says, that members of minority groups feel oppressed by standard, grammatical English.
To avoid any hurt feelings some people may feel by attempting to speak standard, correct English, Gallagher wants to eradicate the stigma associated with Ebonics — or African–American Vernacular English…
When this is the kind of intellectual BS is being pursued by SJW’s then what is the end goal?
By the way, does this imply that ‘members of minority groups’ are less capable of understanding and using English?
Not getting married is a pathway to not doing as well. It drives men to do better. Single Motherhood makes getting out of poverty hard. I think you are spot on here.
What causes the decline of men? “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle”.
History is not a “soft” degree. (Says the history professor. But seriously, the AHA did a study and has data to back me up.)
There was a study a few years back that looked at what made African American men succeed at school. It mentioned the two parent issue, but concluded
Strong role models and mentors seem to be an important – and vitally, very doable – action step to take to improve these numbers.
I’m sure the family structure is driving the statistical masses, but it sure doesn’t help that at college, a lot of blacks are learning to value resentment.
If there’s one attitude that limits a person’s lifetime earning power, it’s that one.
Well, White women and Latina’s are doing everything they can to match the out of wedlock stats of Black women. Whites are now where Blacks were about a generation ago…
Sad but true.
…which tends to suggest that having married parents makes college easier. (Presumably, a single mom is more in need of help than married parents.)
“Married men seem to be more motivated to get jobs and promotions than singles.” The zeitgeist gives married men and even single women an enormous edge over single men. Employers prefer to hire and promote married men and many have a policy of never hiring single men while being fine with single women. Retired now but I would have never managed to work 35 plus years on the railway as a single man without seniority rules made possible by strong union representatation. I recall being the villain of workplace soap operas after being “bumped” on several occasions because I in turn would displace a junior employee. When the cascade of bumping was over often a family man or single mom was laid off which was sad but not my fault. Blame workplace automation.
What percentage of black graduates are directed to diversity/community relations dead end window dressing jobs? How disparate is the percentage of blacks to whites in government or not-for-profit institutions versus corporate/industrial jobs? There are many factors, but I agree that marriage is the biggest single one.
Back in my administrative days, I worked for a business college in Boston and a consulting firm. Both solicited minorities and offered grants, scholarships and internships. Quite honestly, many of the better students and employees were non-American. They tried harder, and didn’t expect any breaks. The work ethics in the countries where they came from were strict, and many times, the parents gave all they had. I also think marriage and family is more stable and traditional in foreign families. They also never saw Americans as more privileged. The worst students were American kids who came from money. I don’t mean to offend, but the black community doesn’t have the best role models, or they pick the wrong people to hold up and emulate. Successful conservative blacks and their achievements seem to be ignored. The black culture elevates a lifestyle that counters marriage, family and education.
Mona,
Very well reasoned and points well taken by all. However, I can’t help but notice the title of the article “For Blacks College is not an Equalizer”. Well, after quota-based affirmative action college is definitely not an equalizer. Top down government bureaucracy that awards you a piece of paper called a degree not for your skills but for your identity is the equalizer. Why bother with all that knowledge nonsense when it’s all about power and what you look like.
What work ethic are you going to foster if the fundamental structure of your system doesn’t reward you for your work but for something else?
Regards,
Jim
Just an education is not enough. Do not have kids before you’re 20. Get married before you have kids and stay married, or at least stay involved in your kids’ lives. But most blacks come from broken homes; fathers are nowhere to be found. Children need adult males in their lives.
And I feel oppressed by native Spanish speakers when I’m in South America. Hey, maybe I could sue them for hurt feelings, a lack of love from some of the señoritas, and such?
Walter E. Williams has it right:
The rest is here. Let’s first get rid of the notion that the ticket to success, for anyone–black, white or whatever–lies in a college degree.
More from the same article:
I second this. And want to underline it.
As for the article, Mona’s logic seems sound.
I’m a white college graduate. I feel economically insecure. My father got sick and had to retire early during my senior year in High School. I had to go to work. I paid for my college education myself. No one helped me. I used Stafford loans, but didn’t have grants or stipends. I worked full-time yet graduated summa cum laude. I’m not a slacker, never have been. I’m terrified of what might happen if I lose my current job.
I’m a MARRIED college graduate who’s supporting an unemployed husband. His company, citing the high cost of doing business, packed up and moved out of California. No one wants to hire a grey-haired, 59 year-old man unless it’s to run the cash register at the local liquor store. The liquor store is one of the few California businesses that’s doing booming business. Marriage didn’t provide me much in the way of financial security. We just refinanced our mortgage. My husband did the leg work, but he wasn’t committing himself. He doesn’t have an income. The new mortgage commits me to work until I’m 90 years-old to pay it off.
Hell, I work for a major university and I feel economically insecure. The state keeps cutting our budget. Research funding opportunities have been cast into doubt under the new administration.
No one I know feels economically secure. What did I/we do wrong?
This hits exactly at my thought process. As a whole, the education system does not require intelligence or hard work to succeed in; rather, it simply requires that one plays the game the way they’re taught, especially in HS. College, however, is (for the moment) still an opportunity for someone to genuinely learn and develop as a person. If the environment isn’t appropriate for the student, the amount of benefit they can derive from it is limited.
Mona,
I’m gonna take another crack at this one. I’ll ask one question and present one piece of evidence.
How can we possibly expect positive results for those who need the extra motivation when pc idiocy reduces the whole system to a grotesque joke?
Copy, Paste, Enter Stanford University
Regards,
Jim
Any degree can be hard. I don’t know any history majors that can understand differential equations. Just saying.
If the point is to find a vocation, I don’t know many people in general who have jobs who understand differential equations. Just saying. :)
It doesn’t sound like you did anything wrong.
I wrote another piece about being an adjunct at a university, which provides no safety net and little pay. I was (mostly) told that free markets do what free markets do, so adjuncts should be happy with their lot or just quit.
Well… yes. Okay. And no.
People on the right sometimes ignore the way the market crushes individuals, even when they have done everything that they’ve been told to do.
So I sure don’t know how to correct the way that the invisible hand can sometimes feel like it is slapping a person or how to make it easier for older people to launch new careers or how to make other people who really don’t have the liberty to “just quit” feel as if their particular lives will turn out okay.
All I can tell you is that I’m sorry your economic position feels precarious. There is more at work in the world than just the market’s invisible hand. And I hear that you are struggling, whatever anyone else says about the state of the economy or employment or whatever.
I thought I’d say that to you, for what it’s worth.
However, per one point of the article here, I am also glad that you have your husband with you. Even hard roads are easier to travel, I think, when you’re not alone.
One way would be to shut down the Ex-Im Bank. Well, that would be more like a symptom of making it easier for these people.
Actuaries. Seriously.
And model/simulation engineers…
I’m not saying jobs that require math don’t exist!!! I’m saying that many jobs don’t require math. Many, many, many jobs. So unless you want to be an actuary or an engineer, you don’t need to know how to do differential equations.
That’s all. ;)