Black students are sacrificing basic needs to afford college at a time when costs are climbing
TheGrio...
Multiple recent reports are adding up just how costly college has gotten for students in general, but especially Black college students.
Have you heard? College, liberating and life-changing though it may be, is expensive, and it may be costing Black students even more.
After the annual cost of attendance at 16 colleges and universities officially crossed the $100,000 threshold, two separate reports released within days of each other are driving home just how costly the endeavor of pursuing higher education has become — especially for Black students.
According to data recently reported by the Pew Research Center, Black college graduates overwhelmingly identify with the working class long after they have clutched their highly coveted degrees. Meanwhile, new data from education technology company Ellucian suggests many Black students are making extraordinary financial sacrifices just to get those degrees in the first place, including choosing between paying for college and covering basic necessities like food, housing, and transportation.
In an analysis released last week by the Pew Research Center looking at who in America considers themselves working class, while 50% of college graduates overall said the description fit them, among Black college graduates, that figure climbed to 58%, compared with 48% of white college graduates and 45% of Asian college graduates. Hispanic graduates were the only group more likely to identify as working class, at 61%.
The analysis also found that getting a degree appears to make almost no difference in whether Black Americans identify with the working class at all. Fifty-three percent of Black Americans without a bachelor’s degree said the term described them “extremely” or “very well,” compared with 58% of those with a bachelor’s degree. Among white Americans, meanwhile, the difference was even more dramatic, dropping from 71% among those without a degree to 48% among college graduates. And that’s again looking at things after they’ve walked across that graduation stage.
“As a result, while there are wide differences between the share of college grads and non-college grads who say they are working class among White and Asian Americans, there is not a substantial educational gap in this identification among Hispanic and Black Americans,” the authors wrote.
Looking closer at the experience of students during the college experience, in Ellucian’s 2026 Student Voice Report, released Tuesday, Sept. 8 by Inside Higher Ed, based on a national survey of more than 2,000 current and prospective college students conducted this spring, 56% of enrolled college students are working full time while pursuing their degrees, and financial pressure is particularly acute at historically Black colleges and minority-serving institutions.
Seventy-five percent of HBCU students and 78% of students attending minority-serving institutions reported having to choose between paying for college and meeting basic needs, compared with 58% of college students overall. HBCU students were also substantially more likely to be working full-time while earning their degrees, at 71%, compared with 56% of students overall.
The level of financial strain these dynamics impose is also significantly shaping the college experience for students. According to the survey, 90% of students said financial stress had negatively affected their mental health to some degree during the previous year, including 42% who said it affected them “very much” or “quite a bit.” Nearly nine in 10 also said they would have chosen another school if it offered them more scholarship money.
Mind you, all of this is arriving amid plenty of economic uncertainty for Americans, a rising cost of living, and an increasingly complicated conversation about whether college remains worth its price tag at all. Confidence in higher education has fallen from 57% in 2015 to just 38% this year, according to Gallup, with cost among the leading reasons Americans give for their lack of confidence.
It’s also arriving at a time when the Trump administration continues its fight against diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education, including ending discretionary funding for several Minority-Serving Institution grant programs. Just last week, the administration proposed going even further with new rules that could threaten the tax-exempt status of private colleges that consider race in scholarships, admissions, and other programs. At the same time, Black studies programs have been scaled back at more than a dozen colleges as schools contend with political pressure, enrollment, and budget constraints.
Now, none of that necessarily means the college degree has lost its value. In fact, the opposite is what makes these numbers so frustrating to watch climb up. Gallup and the Lumina Foundation found this year that nearly three-quarters of adults without degrees still believe earning a credential is as important today as it was 20 years ago, even as just one in four believes a quality, affordable education is accessible to most people.
For Black students, all of this complicates a generational promise about higher education. A degree has long been touted as one of America’s most reliable pathways out of any circumstance, no matter how dire, into the middle class and beyond. College may very well still be life-changing. But for Black students, these numbers, amid these times, make it hard to ignore just how much they’re being asked to sacrifice for that change.
Joe Sallustio, Ellucian’s chief of industry engagement, said in the report, “The institutions that thrive will not necessarily be those with the strongest reputations. They will be the institutions that remain most relevant to the realities of today’s students.”