Nationally, HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) generate more than 130,000 jobs and almost $15 billion annually in total economic impact for their local and regional economies. But HBCUs have been underfunded throughout their histories.

Couple that reality with the fact that student debt is a $1.7 trillion crisis in America, with one in four borrowers in default or serious delinquency. Student debt has become a lifelong burden for many Black borrowers, betraying the promise of college education as the Great Equalizer. 

In some ways, students of HBCUs have unique experiences, which we explore in this film featuring alumni, student debt experts, and Rep. Alma Adams, Ph.D. 

 
 

This film illustrates research findings provided by the UNCF (United Negro College Fund), the Center for Responsible Lending, and the UNC Center for Community Capital. You can learn more about each here.

 

Featured in Order of Appearance
 

Ashley Harrington
Former Federal Advocacy Director
Center for Responsible Lending

Bianca Jones
Alumna Borrower / See an Excerpt

Kamree Anderson
Alumna Borrower / See an Excerpt

Robert Stephens
Alumnus Borrower / See an Excerpt

Dr. Katherine Wheatle
Strategy Officer, Federal Policy & Equity
Lumina Foundation
Alumna Borrower / See an Excerpt

Lodriguez Murray
Senior Vice President, Public Policy & Government Affairs
UNCF

Dr. Fenaba Addo
Associate Professor of Public Policy
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Rep. Alma Adams, Ph.D.
United States Representative
Twelfth District of North Carolina

“Going to college and specifically going to Howard has had a really big influence on who I am and who I’ve become, and it’s something I would never trade.”

Bianca Jones
Howard University Alumna

 

Despite representing only 3% of the nation’s colleges and universities, HBCUs enroll almost 10% of all Black undergraduate students and award 17% of all bachelor’s degrees received by Black students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, HBCU students have reported more stress than Black students in general, but also reported that HBCUs stepped up their support during the crisis.

 

Bianca Jones is a Howard University Alumna and Educator carrying nearly $70,000 in student debt.


“Whenever I needed something…because I came here and stepped out in faith, it was like people were waiting here to help me. That is a situation that is unique to HBCUs – people always want to help you.”

Kamree Anderson is a NC Central University Alumna who had to support her family as well as herself throughout college.


”I would send money home to my mom and my brother and my aunt and sometimes my sister and her kids. I didn’t absolutely have to but I did because everybody was struggling.”

 

 

Robert Stephens is a Winston-Salem State University Alumnus whose student debt has delayed the ability to buy a home, build a business, and start a family.


“This pandemic has exasperated people’s ability to take care of themselves, savings are dwindled to nothing…we need help and a great way that is directly in the purview of President Biden is the ability to cancel student debt. Listen to the people on the ground and do it.”

Dr. Katherine Wheatle is a Strategy Officer of Federal Policy & Equity at Lumina Foundation and a first-generation American and first-generation college student. In addition to her own student loans, her mother needed to take out Parent PLUS loans.


“It looks different for Black women and women of color. While I may be able to make a similar salary to a white male or white female, my peers and counterparts, my income is being stretched thinner and going very differently than what might happen with my peers.”

 
New Research Associated with the Film

Current and former Black students at HBCUs completed a survey and participated in a series of focus groups with both their Black peers at predominately white institutions, as well as their white peers, to describe their financial experiences in and after college. That research—conducted by the African American Research Collaborative for UNCF, the Center for Responsible Lending, the Center for Community Capital at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Hart Research—captures various findings and takeaways associated with those students’ experiences in a collection of memos you can access here.