Yes, this is another working paper less than two months after the first. We decided to go public with the new numbers from the 2019 SCF (just released) because there is a really big problem with Black student debt. https://twitter.com/SuzMKahn/status/1321909394255339521

On August 14, we posted this working paper with 2016 SCF data recommending up to $50,000 in student debt forgiveness, with a policy lens of trying to maximize benefit to the most without increasing the racial wealth gap. https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/student-debt-forgiveness-options-implications-for-policy-and-racial-equity/

In the process of preparing a revised version of that paper for submission, the next wave of SCF data became available, so we reran the analyses with that data. And the thing is, Black student debt is increasing so fast that it actually changed our top line recommendations.

We know student debt is continuing to grow, but the nature of studying a change is that it can be still changing--quickly. We decided to post the new version of the working paper here on #SocArXiv so we could get this new data out ASAP. https://osf.io/tn7d9/ 

And this isn't in the working paper, but I wanted to post the heartbreaking graph that is motivating my urgency. Please look at this graph to see what is happening with median Black student debt in the past six years (red line).

We published our Social Currents article on #predatoryinclusion in student debt when the latest data available was from 2013. As you can see from this graph, what worried us then was bad enough (first five data pts), but this more recent rate of growth is just astronomical.

Median Black student debt has increased by 50% in 6 years. We know college is now unaffordable for most, we know student debt is a burden to many, but the underlying racial wealth gap means this debt will be experienced very differently across race and further diverge futures.

We have put racial equity at the forefront of this analysis because it is at the forefront of this issue. the old exclusionary system is replaced by a single system that produces separate and unequal results for Black and white Americans. this is the crux of predatory inclusion.

Thanks to @rooseveltinst, especially for this blog post updating our working paper, and helping promote its findings.