This is the third article in IWPR’s Advancing Black Women in Leadership series. To read the rest of the series or to learn more about this initiative, click here.
I don’t remember when graduate school entered my mind as an option, but I do know when I realized it was an imperative. My boss at my first “adult” job introduced me to his boss, who was a woman who ran a historic Black civil rights organization. He wanted me to tell her a bit about my background—what I’d studied (economics), where I went to school (University of Chicago), and what my interests were (making an impact on the communities I cared about). I’m sure we spoke at length about a few things. But honestly, the only question I remember her asking was, “Okay, so when are you going to grad school?”
Thankfully, I’d spent some time thinking about this, mostly as a consequence of having graduated in 2008. Truthfully, during the Great Recession, graduate school seemed like a more viable option than continuing to search, unsuccessfully, for a full-time paid role. Her question solidified for me that I’d need to make graduate school a priority.
Black college graduates are more likely than college graduates from other racial and ethnic groups to go to graduate school. It’s something I know firsthand. Both of my parents earned master’s degrees mid-career. My brother and sister have them too. Many of my friends have also earned graduate degrees, including doctoral degrees. They each pursued advanced degrees despite receiving advice that graduate school is not worthwhile. For Black workers, “extra” credentials correlate with higher employment rates and higher earnings. As Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom points out:
Credentialism is often rewarded in bureaucracies because it is a simple, relatively unambiguous designation of “qualified” that conforms to bureaucratic desires to remove discretion from decision-making. Ergo, credentialism . . . can be disproportionately important to black folks who are disproportionately hired by, employed in, and promoted according to the standards of bureaucracies, which reward having a credential. That makes graduate school a lot less stupid of a decision.
What’s more, these degrees open Black women to roles where they can make an impact. It matters that Black women make decisions in the boardrooms of businesses that would otherwise ignore the needs of Black consumers, identify challenges and implement health care solutions to support Black patients, and show up as leaders in education to support Black students.
But the federal government is making it more difficult for people like me who need to borrow money to finance higher education to attend graduate school. By building disadvantage into the tax code, making loans more costly, and removing payment “safety nets,” the government is essentially telling Back students they shouldn’t pursue graduate degrees.
Black students pursuing careers in highly skilled occupations rely on student loans to partially or fully finance their educations because Black families simply do not have the resources to pay for graduate school. Nearly two-thirds (64.5 percent) of Black graduate students borrow to finance graduate education, compared with 42.4 percent of White students. These borrowing disparities arise from historically rooted differences in wealth, family background, postsecondary education, and family contributions to college.
As Dorothy Brown notes in The Whiteness of Wealth, the federal tax system has an incentive for students who borrow to attend college, but it’s one that disadvantages Black borrowers. That’s because the average White borrower, who tends to have smaller overall loan balances, can often fully deduct their annual interest payments, while the average Black borrower cannot. This deduction is intended to support people who have worked hard to pursue higher education, yet it mostly benefits those who had the means and opportunity to begin with.
The 2025 tax law made things even worse for borrowers. The law limits how much households can borrow from the federal government and distinguishes which post-college programs can borrow at higher levels. Notably, nursing and engineering, which are currently experiencing a shortage of skilled workers, were initially tracked for lower borrowing levels. It also reduces the ability of borrowers to pause payments when they face financial hardship, which is troubling given that Black women face an uneven labor market, even when they have high levels of education.
It’s also true that education does not close the pay gap for Black women. And student loan debt can limit wealth-building for Black borrowers and contribute to racial wealth gaps. That said, Black women tend to need additional credentials to compete in the labor market, even when competing against counterparts of other races and genders with less education. For young Black women just entering the job market—one that is challenging for them with or without a degree—the decision about whether to pursue higher education is tricky. Nevertheless, education remains one of the most proven levers for helping Black women increase their earnings.
Limiting access to affordable financing options will stifle Black women’s access to leadership roles. When faced with financial gaps, Black women will decide to either not pursue these degrees, or they will turn to private-sector lenders, which have a history of being extractive and discriminatory toward Black consumers. Both of these options are less attractive than borrowing from the federal government, which offers benefits like standardized interest rates and public service loan forgiveness.
My boss’s boss was right to ask when I was going to grad school. I’m able to write this precisely because I made the decision to go. The opportunity to attend graduate school should be widely available to the next generation, but policy is working against us. Instead of stifling opportunity, we need policymakers to open more pathways to affordable higher education, ensure the tax system supports Black women borrowers, and create pathways to good jobs so Black women can keep leading and making an impact in their households and communities.
Jessica Fulton is an independent economic policy consultant.
