Assessing the Student Loan Debt Burden of First-Generation College Students: Do They Face Additional Difficulties in Debt Repayment?"

Abstract

As a unique demographic group, first-generation college students are receiving an increasing amount of attention in recent years both as a result of their growing population and their implications on upward mobility. However, first-generation college students have characteristics that can facilitate their difficulties in receiving postsecondary education, especially in financial terms. This thesis tries to answer the question of whether first-generation college students, compared to continuing-generation students, take out greater amounts of government educational loans in financing their postsecondary education, and whether first-generation college student face greater student loan debt burdens at age 25 and age 30. Using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) and a fixed effects Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) model, this thesis found that first-generation students take out smaller amounts of government educational loans before and while attending their first postsecondary institution, and there is not enough evidence that the debt repayment pattern of first-generation students is significantly different from that of continuing-generation students. Policy implications of this thesis include continuous academic attention to first-generation college students, as well as the importance of collecting and administering high-quality data so that researchers are better able to conduct analyses that produce reliable results to advise policymaking.