RACEG – Data Memo.

Halie Brown and Kris Smith

For the stories on Historically Black Colleges and Universities we will continue to use the 2016 Arkansas Data that shows that three out of four Arkansas HBCUs have a higher median 3-year default rate than the average of 13 percent. Philander Smith College has a median 3-year default rate of 21 percent, Arkansas Baptist College had a median 3-year default rate of 23 percent and University of ARkansas at Pine Bluff has a median 3-year default rate of 26 percent.

Shorter College, the smallest of the four Arkansas HBCUs with 236 undergraduates in 2016, has not released its 2016 3-year default rate.

We will be using College Insight, Common Origination and Disbursement System and the Enterprise Data Warehouse’s data to give more context to the debt crisis as a whole, and to give a closer look to HBCUs in Arkansas.

College Insight gives us the average percent of graduates who are in debt for only one HBCU, Philander Smith College at 78 percent which has the highest of all listed. It is important to note that Philander Smith College is a private institution.

Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) System provides the amount of direct loans provided to students and the university, which will provide a more in-depth look to how many loans are given out and put default rates into perspective. The HBCU with the highest amount of direct loans disbursed is the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff with around $2.8 million. The second highest HBCU is Philander Smith with $1.3 million.

The Enterprise Data Warehouse’s Portfolio by Borrower Location and Age while it does not directly relate to HBCU debt will provide a more in-depth look at the overall debt crisis in Arkansas. People in the age range of 25 – 34, or millenials, have the highest amount of borrowers at around 126,200 with around $3.9 billion in outstanding debt. Ages 24 and less have around 71,800 borrowers with around $1 billion in outstanding debt.

The institutions for both the top 10 and bottom 10 three-year cohort default rates showed some trends across the state. For starters, located in the northern or more central part of Arkansas are the institutions with the lowest three-year cohort default rate. The populations here are more predominately white, as opposed to having a larger minority community. There are also a large number of medical institutions in the bottom 10. It can be inferred that the graduates come out of college working jobs in the field that allow them to begin to comfortably make a living and pay down their student loans.

Secondly, all of the highest default rates showed a distinct trend. All of the institutions are located in the lower southern half of the state. The data shows that this area (or surrounding areas) have a highly saturated African-American population. Historically, these areas are more poverty-stricken than other parts of the state. Overall, these institutions are geographically located in a strikingly different position than the institutions with the lowest three-year cohort default rate. In addition, a large majority of the schools with high default rate are classified as beauty schools (Arkansas College of Barbering and Hair Design), or a historically black institution (the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff).

We are going to use the existing 2015-2016 College Scorecard data for Strayer University and the University of Phoenix. The data cannot be found anywhere else for more recent years. Using the available data we will make a comparison between for-profit universities.

We will use College InSight to filter through all the beauty schools in the state to see beauty school debt. Also the College InSight data is updated to the 2017 fiscal year.

http://college-insight.org/#explore/go&h=6d38087e46818e79ac32f5fab17eea08

-Megan and Skylar