The verified Women’s March account on Twitter published a tweet lamenting the amount of student debt held by women, but misstated the math in the tweet.
“Women hold $929 BILLION in student debt, two-thirds of the nation’s ENTIRE $1.7 trillion student debt load,” the Women’s March tweeted. “This is a gender justice issue. @POTUS cancel student debt and put an end to this crisis.”
To start, $929 billion is 54.6% of $1.7 trillion, closer to half than two-thirds.
The implications from the Women’s March are also wrong. The tweet and the group’s 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.
There are reasons for this discrepancy, which I wrote about three years ago when the embattled #MeToo organization Time’s Up made a similar claim to the one being made by the Women’s March now.
Women may earn more degrees than men, but they’re still earning degrees that lead to lower-paying jobs after college. As I’ve reported numerous times before, nine of the top 10 lowest paying majors are dominated by women, while nine of the top 10 highest paying majors are dominated by men — and women in large cities actually out-earn their male peers just out of college.
