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Sen. Elizabeth Warren is being called out once more for repeating an oft-debunked claim about college debt held by women.
According to The Daily Wire, for years, left-leaning women’s groups have repeatedly claimed that women hold far more student debt than men, which is not true.
On Thursday, the Massachusetts Democrat tweeted: “Women owe over two-thirds of student debt. Canceling student debt would help give millions of women a fair shot at starting a business, saving for a home, and pursuing their dreams. Student debt is a gender justice issue.”
Women owe over two-thirds of student debt. Canceling student debt would help give millions of women a fair shot at starting a business, saving for a home, and pursuing their dreams. Student debt is a gender justice issue. It’s time for @POTUS to act.
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) March 24, 2022
The outlet notes:
As The Daily Wire has previously reported (twice, actually, over the past three years) women do not hold two-thirds of student debt. They hold just over half. Warren is repeating a claim made by the Women’s March and Time’s Up, which includes bad math.
Warren at least left the numbers out of her tweet to avoid people pointing out her math was bad, but her tweet is still wrong. There is $1.7 trillion dollars’ worth of student debt owed, and women owe $929 billion of that – which is 54.6%, not two-thirds.
The outlet also called Warren out for her “gender justice” claim:
The implications from Warren’s claim are also wrong. The tweet and Leftist history of claiming women victimhood suggest it is unfair that women hold so much debt. In reality, women are doing better than men when it comes to college debt. Women make up 59.5% of all college students as of spring 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported, while men made up just 40.5% of enrollment.
This means that while women make up 59.5% of students, they hold just 54.6% of the debt, while men – who make up just 40.5% of students – hold 45.4% of the debt.
The outlet’s analysis went on to note that while women are indeed earning more degrees than men, according to data the degrees they are receiving lead to lower-paying jobs. Nine of the top 10 lowest-paying jobs are dominated by women, while just the opposite is true of the top 10 highest-paying jobs, nine out of 10 of which are dominated by men.
Also, women in big cities typically out-earn their male peers just out of college.
“A recent chart from American Enterprise Institute scholar Mark Perry goes even deeper into the discrepancies between men and women in numerous aspects in life,” The Daily Wire’s Ashe Schow wrote. “Perry found that for every 100 women who earn a bachelor’s degree, just 73 men earn one. And for every 100 women who earn a master’s degree, just 56 men earn one. The numbers are slightly closer for doctorates: For every 100 women who earn one, 85 men do.”
Schow went on to cite the National Review, which reported some years ago:
In inflation-adjusted terms, government spending on higher education has never been higher. It has climbed by nearly $2,000 per student (in inflation-adjusted dollars) since 2001. As the Foundation for Economic Education points out, Pell Grant spending alone rose 72 percent in the few short years from 2008 to 2013. Tuition and other expenses have risen right along with that spending, driven mainly by an explosion in administrative costs.
In the 1980s, there were about twice as many professors as administrators on our college payrolls; today, that number has been reversed, and there are about twice as many administrators and staff as instructors. Administrative spending has increased substantially relative to spending on instruction — and both are much higher in real per-student terms.
Some education analysts have suggested that as the federal government made it easier to get a student loan, colleges and universities steadily raised their tuition because administrators were essentially tapping into guaranteed money.
“The more money the federal government pumps into financial aid, the more money the colleges charge for tuition. Inflation-adjusted tuition and fees have tripled over those same 30 years while aid quadrupled; the aid is going up faster than the tuition. Thanks to the federal government, massive sums of money are available to pay for massive tuitions,” US News reported — in 2011.
