College degrees do not close the racial wealth gap

Evidence

College degrees generally translate into higher income, but those who do not graduate—the majority of black college students—leave without degrees and saddled with debt. Among those who attend for-profit colleges, an even greater majority do not graduate. Since the Great Recession, 95 percent of jobs filled went to applicants with at least some college. The wage premium has risen significantly for a college degree. So I understand the drive of black Americans to pursue higher education. Degrees, however, do not fix racial income or wealth inequality. White Americans without a four-year college degree earn less than blacks with a college degree, but they still have more than twice the family net worth. Black households headed by a college graduate have less wealth than white households headed by a high school dropout. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 344

Categorization

• QUESTION: The black-college-graduate vs white-high-school-dropout wealth inversion is a striking, citable statistic worth verifying for the source.
• XREF: connects to: Racial income inequality persists despite near-parity in education — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 453; Educational expansion and reduced prejudice have not increased economic opportunity or mobility — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 845