While Brittani Williams was busy working toward her bachelor’s degree, the student loan debt she was quickly accruing rarely crossed her mind. Her focus was on her coursework.

A first-generation student, Williams relied on loans to fund her college and hopefully, help change the course of her family’s lives.

After she had her degree in hand, it was time to start paying. The reality of her debt finally hit her.

Now a doctoral student in education leadership policy at Texas Tech University, Williams often thinks about the student loan debt she is still accruing. And for Williams, a higher education senior policy analyst at the advocacy group Education Trust, the personal is also professional.

She’s studying the way people like her — Black women borrowers — are burdened by college debt more profoundly than any other demographic group.

Nearly two-thirds of the $1.7 trillion in student debt in America is held by women, and Black borrowers are more negatively affected due to systemic racism, according to a report Williams coauthored, “How Black Women Experience Student Debt.” Her work is an extension of research started by Education Trust in 2020 with a National Black Student Loan Debt Study survey of 1,300 Black borrowers and the subsequent Jim Crow Debt report, which identified college debt as a racial and economic justice issue.

Williams and her coauthor, Victoria Jackson, Education Trust’s assistant director of higher education policy, said that Black women are marginalized due to their race and gender, putting them among the lowest earners in the labor market. The racial wealth gap leaves Black women with fewer resources to pay back their loans because, Williams said, for Black women, more degrees do not necessarily equal more money.

Read the full article about Black women's student debt by Olivia Sanchez at The Hechinger Report.