Never-before-released data from the federal government has shed new light on the debt burden of low-income families in California.
More than 13,500 low-income students attending California’s two public university systems had parents take out federal loans on their behalf in recent years, according to a CalMatters analysis of figures released by the U.S. Department of Education last week for every college in the nation.
The numbers show how much parents borrow in federal loans for their students by campus, filling a prominent hole in the public’s understanding of student loan debt.
The data paint a complicated picture of what some experts call intergenerational college debt. Relatively few low-income parents of students enrolled at the University of California and California State University borrowed. The average median of those that did was approximately $10,500, slightly less than the national average median of $12,500.