Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Education Plan Will Help Fund HBCUs

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) unveiled a comprehensive higher education plan on Monday that will help fund historically Black College and Universities (HBCUs), as well as eliminate student loan debt and create free public college.

Warren’s education plan would cancel 95 percent of some student loan debt for the nearly 45 million Americans with debt and eliminate student loan debt for 75 percent of people. Her plan also states that the program will “substantially increase Black and Latinx wealth, and help close the racial wealth gap.” Warren also called for $50 billion in funding for HBCUs.

“For decades, Black Americans were kept out of higher education by virtue of overtly discriminatory policies. Even as the Civil Rights Movement rolled back racially discriminatory admissions policies, the stratification of our higher education system kept students of color concentrated in under-resourced institutions and left them vulnerable to predatory actors,” Warren wrote in her report. “Black and Latinx students are underrepresented in four-year public colleges and overrepresented in community colleges and for-profit colleges.”

The senator wrote that 95 percent of Black students who are attending a for-profit college took out student loans, and that 75 percent of Black students “who did not complete their program at a for-profit college defaulted.” She added that many for-profit institutions “have built a business model around sucking down taxpayer dollars while delivering a poor education primarily to students of color.”