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Student Loans Help Women More Than Men in Reaching Graduation

February 22, 2013

Student Loans Help Women More Than Men in Reaching Graduation

Rachel Dwyer, associate professor of sociology, is co-author of a new study revealing that student loans provide more help to women than they do for men in encouraging graduation from college. Dwyer conducted the study with Ohio State Professor of Sociology Randy Hodson and Laura McCloud, assistant professor of sociology at Pacific Lutheran University. Their results appear in the February 2013 issue of the journal Gender & Society.

Findings showed that, on average, taking out loans actually makes graduation more likely for all students. But at a certain point—which is about $2,000 lower for men than for women—debt has diminishing returns and becomes less effective at boosting chances of graduation.

Data for the study came from 3,676 young Americans who participated in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. The NLSY is conducted by the College of Arts and Sciences’ Center for Human Resource Research (CHRR) for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This research was funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

One reason loans help women more may be tied to job prospects for college dropouts, which are much better for men than for women.

"At least early in their careers, women suffer more than men if they don't have a college degree," said Dwyer.

"Women will go deeper in debt to finance college because they need the degree more than men if they want to earn a good living. Men will drop out at lower levels of debt."


Read the entire press release, courtesy of Jeff Grabmeier, senior director, Ohio State Research and Innovation Communications.

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