Get a worthwhile degree and it is easier to pay off loans

From America’s Student Loans Were Never Going to Be Repaid by Laura Beamer and Marshall Steinbaum in the New York Times.  I have remarked a number of times just how bad education loan policy is and how badly structured is the program.  It would almost certainly be regulated out of the market were it a private sector scam.  It locks people into bad decision-making and makes it challenging to pay down the debt and pay off the loan.  Beamer and Steinbaum bring attention to the Feds appear to be committed to immiserating women, blacks and Hispanics.  

Some reasonably bad reporting here, as in it was always intended that students loans were to be repaid, despite the headline.  

What is most striking to me is this graphic.

Click to enlarge.

Regardless of intent, what this graphic would seem to confirm is that the student loan program works for men and for Whites and Asians.  Women, Blacks and Hispanics - not so much.

Women, Blacks and Hispanics are more likely than men and Whites and Asians to take degrees which do not earn enough to warrant the cost of the education.  

The New York Times reporters are, as usual, almost incoherent in the face of data.

These divergent trajectories are due to structural inequalities in the labor market, which disadvantaged workers try to overcome with increased educational attainment. More advantaged workers don’t need to borrow as much to earn a decent salary and can start paying off the debt they do take on more quickly. 

They cannot identify the structural inequities that are supposed to exist and it is hard to identify what they might be such that the structural inequities selectively benefit Men, Whites and Asians while Women, Backs and Hispanics suffer.

The obvious answer seems to be that Men, Whites and Asians are selecting for more remunerative degrees and therefore are better able to repay the loans.  An assumption that would need to be tested but an assumption that is likely true.

UPDATE:  

California will institute a math framework based on a failed experiment in SF. Math classes will emphasize social justice. The changes will harm the people the equity crew claims to care about, while the privileged will continue to have access to high-quality advanced math. pic.twitter.com/e9j1vTZgOu

— Laura Powell (@LauraPowellEsq) July 13, 2023