75% of Young Workers Have College Debts

Three in four recent graduates who take jobs at nonprofit organizations

bring educational debt with them, a marked increase over previous years, according to a new study, conducted for the Building Movement Project, a national organization in New York that focuses on social change and the cultivation of new nonprofit leaders.

Among the study’s other key findings:

• Graduates who have accepted jobs at nonprofit groups are more likely to have borrowed to finance their education than graduates who go to work for the government or a private business.

• Nonprofit workers tend to pay off their student loans more slowly than workers in government and private business. Even nonprofit workers who have spent several years at their jobs earn an average of 11 percent less than for-profit workers, making it more difficult for them to pay back loans.

• The average amount of debt incurred by all college graduates has grown by more than 64 percent since 1993. As a result, recent graduates carry greater educational debt than any previous generation, says Amanda Ballard, who conducted the study for the Building Movement Project while pursuing a master’s degree at the University of California at Berkeley.

Ms. Ballard, who now has a job training public-school principals in Oakland, Calif., says she was drawn to the subject of nonprofit workers and academic debt after she observed many young employees at organizations postponing the independence of adulthood while they paid off college and graduate-school loans.

“I saw friends who worked for nonprofit groups who were living with their parents or taking night-school classes to defer repaying their loans,” Ms. Ballard says. “It was clear that they were having a hard time making it on their salaries.”

Free copies of “Understanding the Next Generation of Nonprofit Employees: the Impact of Educational Debt” are available at the Building Movement Project’s Web site (http://www.buildingmovement.org/artman/uploads/
educational_debt_001.pdf).