Finance Graduate Education

Overall, 53.4 percent of master’s degree recipients borrowed money to fund their graduate education. Across all student groups, the average amount per borrower for graduate education ($47,906) surpassed the median amount per borrower ($38,566), indicating that a subset of the population took on substantially larger amounts of debt.

The majority of Black or African American (77.5 percent) and Hispanic or Latino (74.7 percent) master’s degree recipients borrowed funds, compared with 42.5 percent of Asian students and 18.6 percent of international students.

Black or African American students began their master’s degree programs with higher levels of undergraduate debt than those of other groups. As a result of this and high levels of borrowing for graduate school, Black or African American master’s degree recipients borrowed an average of $79,046 per borrower for their undergraduate and graduate education—the highest average amount of any group.